A few days ago, I was writing a post on Facebook and I saw a pop-up!
It was telling me to insert some hashtags into my organic post.
I didn't think much of it at the time, because…It wasn't anything new.
Back in 2013 Facebook introduced the hashtag feature.
With this, you could insert relevant hashtags in you posts so that
your friends and other connections could search for your posts easily.
This didn't catch-on.
I tried it myself but, could hardly see any difference in the amount of
views for my organic posts.
For promoted or sponsored posts, this didn't matter at all.
Earlier I had written a post on how Facebook is throttling the traffic
to your organic posts. You can read it here.
But then, a few days ago, I saw a brown button below my recent post.
Hmm, looks like something new from Facebook, I thought.
I learned that this button showed how my hashtags were performing.
Wow! I thought.
I have been using hashtags for 7 years, and now Facebook
has introduced a feature to track their performance.
Amazing!
Still, this is a welcome move and it means Facebook is getting
behind the hashtags movement. You can, finally, track how your
hashtags are doing in the cyberspace.
What this means for you.
This means you can now insert hashtags in your organic posts and
get more views by allowing others to find your posts by searching for them.
Who can find your posts?
At the moment, only your connections can find them.
Those who are not in your friend list cannot find your posts even if they use the hashtags
in your posts.
Its a privacy issue that Facebook hasn't addressed, yet.
How to find the right hashtags?
For now, you cannot search for the best performing hashtags on Facebook.
Why? Simply because your search results are limited to hashtags used
by your connection only.
Your search doesn't cover the whole of Facebook.
Is there a way out?
You bet! There is a round-about way to handle this challenge.
Use Instagram!
No, no, no. I am not asking you to use Instagram instead for Facebook.
Far from it.
All I am suggesting is that you do you hashtag research
in Instagram, find the best ones and use them in you Facebook posts.
Sneaky, isn't it?
How many hashtags can you insert?
Well theoretically, you could insert as many hashtags as you want.
Facebook posts have a huge character limit – approx. 63,000 characters per post!
But practically, some well-chosen 3-5 hashtags should be enough, is my opinion.
Try them and track their performance.
You can then take a call once you have the numbers.
Conclusion
For small business owners this comes as a welcome step.
This means you can reach more people without spending for it.
Although your reach increases, only among your own connections.
Isn't it better than reaching only 1-2% of your friend list?
Get into the practice of researching your hashtags and tracking them.
You'll be ready for them when Facebook introduces the
research feature on the platform. which I am hoping they would.
Read more about it here.
If you need a step-by-step strategy for Social Media, click here.
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Thanks for your thoughts. One thing I’ve got noticed is that facebook is trying to get people to pay to make their content visible. This is not what Facebook stood for when it started. Somewhere it seems to have lost its way.
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