Do you and should you include Hashtags in your LinkedIn posts? Over a week, Social Media Today posted another poll asking its community whether or not they include Hashtags in their LinkedIn approach. Surprisingly, the poll revealed that an overwhelming majority now do, based on the 3000 people that participated.
#LinkedIn
15% of those who responded don’t incorporate Hashtags into tier LinkedIn posts, which does beg the question – should you even bother? Do Hashtags have any effect on content performance?
As a quick, contextual refresher, LinkedIn actually supported Hashtag use back in 2013, before deactivating them due to various usage lacks, then once again reinstating support in 2016. Given the somewhat on-off relationship LinkedIn has thus far had with Hashtags, it’s only logical for questions to remain as to whether or not people should use them. However, over the last couple of years, LinkedIn has been working to put more emphasis on Hashtags as a connective tool, helping show users more relevant content and helping brands better link to niche interests.
As an example, users now manage their followed Hashtags as a means to control their News Feed. Company pages, on the other hand, can also be attached to certain tags via the ‘Community Hashtags’ feature, enabling users to post as their brands in related discussions.
Use them correctly – Be sure to include the # sign before any keyword or phrase. Avoid any spaces, punctuation, special symbols or emojis.
Don’t overdo it – We recommend using no more than three hashtags per post, and leveraging both broad and niche hashtags for increased exposure.
Do your research – Before including a hashtag, type it into the LinkedIn search bar to make sure it has strong usage in order to connect you to the most relevant audiences.
Go niche – Try going as specific as possible for increased exposure (#TED2021 vs. #marketing)
So, now that we have direct insight from LinkedIn themselves, do Hashtags really help? Still, it’s hard to say. In the case of Social media Today’s page, Hashtags have not boosted the traffic and have only produced mildly steady results over the past two years. Then again, focus also comes into consideration. The results might change for other foci, whereas improving referral traffic doesn’t really speak much of Hashtag effectiveness on LinkedIn.
The Wrap
The only way to gauge Hashtag effectiveness is to first get your audience baseline performance data, then to test Hashtag implementation for three to six months to see how it would impact your numbers. On top of that, you might find more success in trying out Hashtags recommended by LinkedIn through the composer and by following LinkedIn Editor Dan Roth’s Creator Weekly newsletter, where he regularly shares trending topics on the platform.
So, generally speaking, would we advise using Hashtags on LinkedIn? No. At least if your goal is to improve your referral traffic score, then Hashtags do close to nothing in helping net you more numbers. Conduct a more conclusive test on your own to determine Hashtag effectiveness for other objectives. If they play out well for what you’re after, only then would we say that they’re useful.
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