Understandably, not all of us are hashtag masters. That’s why we thought it may be valuable to send out a quick email to describe how and why hashtags are used, for those of us still a bit confused. Here we go.
What is a hashtag?
A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash mark (#) that is used within a social media post to identify a topic of interest. Whenever a user adds a hashtag to their post, it’s able to be indexed by the social network and becomes searchable/discoverable by other users. Once someone clicks on that hashtag, they’ll be brought to a page that aggregates all of the posts with the same hashtags, in real-time.
How do we use the hashtag #NUEaglePride ?
Using a hashtag on a social post is really as simple as adding #NUEaglePride to a post. If you happen to be posting on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook and are sharing an appropriate photo relevant to our New Ulm Eagles, adding this hashtag will allow others to see it. (This includes, of course, New Ulm Public School athletic pages, club pages, school store, etc - whether they are run by teachers, parents, students, or coaches. When #NUEaglePride is added to posts on these other pages, it will group them together and allow them to all be searchable.)
How many is too many?
Studies have shown that posts with at least one hashtag receive more engagement than those that don’t, and that engagement generally starts to fall off whenever posts have more than two hashtags. People are less likely to click on a post and interact with it when it’s flooded with hashtags and looks spammy. This isn’t a big deal for us now, as we only have #NUEaglePride as our main hashtag, but as we start using others to differentiate between teams, classes, schools, etc, we need to be mindful of how many we are using.
Want More?
This YouTube Video gives a nice summary of how to use hashtags, search with them, and promote your brand (school) with them.