Seriously. When's the last time you looked anything up on Facebook using a hashtag?
Never. Facebook is still really great for many things. From kitten videos to political rants, family connections to event promos. Regrettably perhaps, a venue for research it is not. Nobody - and I mean nobody - is looking up a hashtag on Facebook. "But surely there's no harm in using hashtags on Facebook, right?"
No, no harm - but can we raise the bar a bit?
Facebook is a more passive social medium. The feed tells us what to read and in what order. And because there's simply no advantage whatsoever to hashtagging on Facebook, doing so actually detracts from your message and kinda makes you look like you've never used Facebook in your life.
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
The point to repeat over and over is that social media is not just one thing. It's a variety of channels where you speak different languages to different audiences. Different tools for different days and different moods in different places. Hashtags are a great way to add context, or find and track content relating to a particular subject, but you have to know where and how to use them correctly.
So where do I use hashtags then? Hashtags were born on Twitter and will probably forever be king on Twitter. Instagram would be nothing without them, LinkedIn has an ok relationship with them, and TikTok? Well anything goes on TikTok! No matter where you decide to use them, make sure your hashtags aren't just adding more noise than value. LA/
Next up: How to hashtag.