As far as marketing your brand on social media is concerned, hashtags are basic to achieving success. Logically, the use of hashtags is a technique to make your content visible, if accurately utilized.

Twitter was known as the first social media platform where hashtags were first broadly used, but they’ve now been utilized across the entire social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

In one of my most recently published training tutorials, a user requested a tutorial that explains how hashtags can be correctly used in social media posts, comments and images.

Here's my response.

Understanding the usage of hashtags leads to a better way of building engagement with your social audience and boosting your social influence at no cost except for the time taken in mastering each medium and focusing on trends.

If used accurately, hashtags enable people that have got keen interest in your specialty to find what you’re creating and help grow your impact and social media followers.

What is a Hashtag?

A hashtag is a keyword or simply a word that is preceded by a hash (#), also called the pound symbol. It’s utilized in a social media post to enable people who may have got some keen interest in your specialty to easily find it whenever they are searching for a specific hashtag or keyword related to your posts. It ensures that attention is drawn to what you write about and interaction is deeply encouraged.

When a keyword or phrase is being used as a hashtag, it should be spelt out with no space, like #choosinghashtags, and so on. Numbers may be included, but no punctuation or symbols should be added.

You can probably place the pound symbol in the opening paragraph, middle or closing paragraph of your social media comments or posts, and it ensures that what you’ve created will be indexed by the appropriate network. With this tactic, even those who aren’t your followers or fans can possibly find your write-ups.