LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking and sharing thought leadership content with your audience. One of the most common mistakes when posting on is failure to add or make the most of LinkedIn hashtags. Hashtags are just as important on LinkedIn as on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook so, you might want to re-think your strategy and start using hashtags on LinkedIn.
Why are LinkedIn hashtags important?
Adding hashtags to your LinkedIn posts significantly drives a higher amount of traffic to your post, drawing your target audience to your page as well as it being a way for users to connect with their community (via your content).
Here are WOI’s 5 top tips for using hashtags on LinkedIn:
1) Maximise your post’s reach potential
Hashtags on LinkedIn play an extensive role in maximising your post’s reach potential. Adding hashtags will triple your post engagement and visibility. Using the example of #contentmarketing for a post on the subject, it could reach an audience of thousands vs dozens by organic reach. By adding a relevant hashtag that people are following, it becomes visible to a wider large audience – those who are already interested in the topic.
2) Do your LinkedIn hashtag research
Before posting on LinkedIn, check out your chosen hashtags in LinkedIn search bar to ensure that they are relevant, current and have a good (potential) audience reach. The hashtag should have strong to medium usage (a significant number of posts that contain this hashtag) in order to achieve your desired goal for the post and reach your target audiences.
3) Use branded hashtags
Branded hashtags are those hashtags that are unique to you and your brand. Using our company as an example, we could use #whiteorchidinsights or #WOI. These are used to generate brand awareness, promote your brand’s name, location, products, and services offered. Branded hashtags are useful to create awareness amongst your targeted audience and it also influences your community to follow as well as use your branded hashtag especially if they have been inspired by your post or feel that their own posts are relevant to your brand.
4) Prioritise content-specific hashtags
Content-specific hashtags are king. Most of the time, people search for the topics and services they are interested in first rather than searching for branded hashtags unless they are interested in content relating to a specific brand. Using broad-match hashtags (those that are more general and would potentially capture a broad and large audience) related to your industry will help with this. For example, if you are a marketer and your content piece is about social media marketing, you can use broad-match hashtags such as #marketing or #socialmedia or content-specific hashtags like #socialmediamarketing.
5) Avoid hashtag overload on LinkedIn
Curate the hashtags you choose to use for your post to avoid looking “spammy”. Quality not quantity is key. It may feel like using more hashtags will improve discoverability and engagement but LinkedIn itself suggests not to. Too many hashtags can lower the essence and impact of the post. Try to keep to three hashtags as your guide.
Adding hashtags to LinkedIn posts will let people discover and engage with your content effectively. Keep on experimenting with new hashtags to see what is working best for your specialism or brand. LinkedIn hashtags can also be used to promote events, campaigns, and brand messages. Last but not the least, do not forget to go through the trending hashtags and add them to your post if relevant to boost your reach.
Informative, thought leadership content, “human” soft content, announcements and (appropriate) hashtags will help you maximise opportunities on LinkedIn.
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