Do Hashtags Work on Facebook?

Many people have various opinions as to whether hashtags work on Facebook. Therefore, to achieve a well-rounded view on whether hashtags can work for you and your business it is important to first review the basics. Once you understand the basics, you will then be able to determine if hashtags will work for Facebook posts on your business page.

hashtags work

The Basics

HashtagFacebook introduced a system to support the use of hashtags in 2013. This was introduced to keep up with the likes of Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. Hashtags are a method of those using social media (including both business and personal profiles) to tag their content with keywords. This then allows social networks to easily organise the hashtags and also means that consumers are able to quickly and easily find what they are searching for.

When a hashtag is used it creates a specific topic which can help expand discoverability. Hashtags will not work if you put a space between two words (for example, #Social Media won’t work, instead it should be written as #SocialMedia). Punctuation marks are also not hashtag friendly (this includes; question marks, exclamation points, commas, etc.). Clicking on a hashtag on Facebook will then take consumers to posts containing that hashtag.

The Verdict

Hashtags have the ability to work on Facebook, if used correctly. However you must conduct thorough research in order to understand how to properly apply the hashtags to any given situation. Research must be conducted on the demographics of your desired target market and whether they are attuned to hashtags. If your target audience doesn’t have a full understand of what a hashtag is and how they work (or they don’t even use hashtags) then it would be most beneficial to not waste resources on creating hashtags for your posts on Facebook.

However, if you feel as though your target audience both understands and uses hashtags, then it is important to use them for your business’s Facebook page. There are a few key components to understand to ensure that your hashtags will work on Facebook. Firstly, research from Socialbakers found that if you use to many hashtags this will most likely result in less user engagement of your posts on Facebook. Two hashtags is usually the desired number when posting content.

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Also, to ensure success of your hashtags on social media, especially on Facebook, it is best not to create hashtags that are too long. These can be hard to read and understand for your readers. Therefore it is important to create short and simple hashtags that consumers can easily understand. Finally, it is important to not focus all of your Facebook content towards hashtags. Hashtags should not be the only thing that you post on your Facebook page; they are meant to simply accompany cleaver and relevant content.