Hashin’ It Out: What You Need to Know About Marketing With Facebook Hashtags

In this blog series, Hashin’ It Out, we’re breaking down best practices for using hashtags across the social media landscape. Yesterday, we covered Twitter hashtags. Today we’ll tackle Facebook hashtags.

Users like to use hashtags to find topics and follow conversations. Social media marketers like them because they can extend the reach of brand messages. Hashtags allow your content to be seen by people who don’t even follow you—that’s pure marketing gold. While hashtags can be used on multiple platforms, the use case does differ slightly on each one. It’s important to understand how they work on each one to make sure you are using them to their full potential, and most importantly, look like a true social media pro.

Facebook #Hashtags

While the majority of Twitter accounts are public (only 12% of accounts are protected), the opposite is true on Facebook (only 28% of accounts are completely public ). Since most people choose not to share their updates publicly, the uniting power of hashtags—and the ability to extend a marketer’s reach—is significantly lower. Since they were introduced on June 12, 2013, some brands have been attempting to utilize hashtags the same way they do on Twitter by instructing people to make their updates public to participate in the conversation. The problem with that is people are pretty tied to the way they use Facebook. They value privacy and it remains to be seen if hashtags will catch on enough to change that.

Promote campaigns across multiple platforms

Facebook has pretty strict promotional rules, which means you can’t have people enter a contest simply by including a branded hashtag on an update like you can on other platforms. But you can promote contests or campaigns you’re running elsewhere. Using the same hashtag on every platform will help increase awareness.

Monitoring made easy

You can search for hashtags on Facebook by using the URL facebook.com/hashtag/____ and including the keyword on the end. You should monitor hashtags related to your brand and even just your brand name. Some people have been using hashtags on Facebook for awhile and now that they are clickable some topics—both positive and negative—could start to trend for your brand. Don’t be the last to know.

When you click on a hasthag other similar hashtags will appear on the top of the page so you can easily browse and potentially find other topics that your brand should be participating in.

Miss yesterday’s post? Check out Twitter #Hashtags. And stay tuned for Instagram #Hashtags coming to the blog tomorrow.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/social-media/hashin-need-know-marketing-facebook-hashtags-0605067?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hashin-need-know-marketing-facebook-hashtags