Cognition #3: The Hashtag class!

Hashtags were invented around 14 years ago, and they have been one of the driving forces of content, visibility, and reach during the past 5-7 years.

In Cognition #3, I want to emphasize Hashtags as a strategy and How one can leverage hashtags in the content world.

Today, we're gonna cover,

1. Hashtags on Twitter.

2. Hashtags on Instagram.

3. Hashtags on LinkedIn.

4. Non-Technical aka Fun Segment.

This one's gonna be long and insightful. Grab your attention and patience together.

Let's dive in.

Hashtags on Twitter

The best thing about Twitter is it requires zero hashtag research.

On a broad spectrum, you can use hashtags in one of the two ways:

1. Trending hashtags.

2. Evergreen hashtags.

Trending hashtags

Let me give an example:

Assume Ronaldo announces his retirement today. I'm sure a hashtag like #ThankyouRonaldo will trend within an hour.

These are called trending hashtags—usually born due to an event.

It happens in all arenas—marketing, sports, finance, politics, entertainment, world news, health, festivals, etc. Everywhere!

They will be around both shitposting and serious discussions.

Also, the lifespan of trending hashtags is short. So you've to capitalize on them while they last.

How are trending hashtags an advantage?

Since there is huge attention on one trend, a high population keeps scrolling through the tweets.

If your perspective or content generates curiosity, you drive people to your profile. This allows them to know about you, read your tweets, and even follow you.

Or the users just engage with your content, and now you're visible to their network.

You can always find trending hashtags under explore section. There are different categories to choose as well.

Evergreen hashtags

These are popular hashtags that most users can easily relate to.

There is no expiry to the usage of evergreen hashtags.

The advantage is they give context. Your audience knows what you're talking about.

Examples of evergreen hashtags:

Click on the hashtags below to see some real-time tweets.

#WeMetOnTwitter: Used when two people who know each other from Twitter meet in person or date each other.

#buildinpublic: Used by entrepreneurs when they share processes and updates about their products.

Overview

Use hashtags on Twitter to maximize attention during trends or to give context to tweets.

That's it. Gaining reach with hashtags on Twitter is not possible.

What's the alternative?

Twitter users don't follow hashtags, but they do follow Topics of their interest.

As you can see below, there are several categories and topics.

Use topics as keywords in your tweets, and there is a possibility for you to rank for topics.

Hashtags on Instagram

I told Twitter needs zero hashtag research. It's completely the opposite for Instagram.

Instagram is probably the only platform where you spend sizeable time on hashtag research. This is because Instagram allows you to use upto 30 hashtags per post/reel. And 30 is a BIGGG number.

Now, let's dive into the strategy and discuss some important questions.

How many hashtags to use?

Use all 30.

Hashtags are nothing but an opportunity to be visible to people who don't follow you.

The more you use, the more is your reach. It's the probability game.

But the quantity itself does not guarantee the reach.

You need a strategy. In this case, it's called balance.

How to find the right mix of hashtags?

I use a 7-20-3 balance.

Instagram only lets you see the number of posts posted under a hashtag. It doesn't display the number of followers a hashtag has.

In such cases, you have to play with time.

What is playing with time?

Let's say you've posted under a hashtag with 1M+ posts.

The hashtag has HUGEE HUGEEE traffic, which means new posts pop up frequently.

When new posts show up often, it is hard for you to stay in the recent section for a long time. Have a look at this:

You can see the posts getting rearranged and replaced every minute.

Hence, to stay longer on the hashtag's feed, consider using more secondary hashtags—hashtags with 100k-1M posts.

Secondary hashtags have a decent number of posts under them, which essentially can mean they have a good number of followers too.

So, playing with time means you choose secondary hashtags over the top ones to stay in relevant hashtags' feeds for a longer time. This ensures you have more visibility.

Example:

Suppose you've posted on the topic '5 strategies to build a personal brand.' Consider these hashtags,

1. Hashtag with over 1M+ posts: #personalbranding (1.8M)

2. Hashtag with 100k-1M posts: #personalbrandingtips (117k)

Since both the hashtags are relevant to personal branding, the audience of these hashtags will have similar interests.

All you need to do is use both hashtags. The first makes your post visible in high traffic areas, and the second ensures your post stays for a long time.

"Add relevant hashtags. Scale relevant hashtags. And you get your 30 hashtags."

Use the hashtags between 0-100k only if you think they are relatable to the audience. Also, check for numbers. If a hashtag has less than 30k posts, it will be wise to choose another relevant hashtag with more posts.

There are some tools that give you a set of hashtags. I prefer manual research.

PRO Tip: Post insights can be viewed using an Instagram Business account. See how hashtags perform and keep altering the balance to find a mix that suits you the best.

Hashtags on LinkedIn

LinkedIn users use hashtags for two things:

1. To get reach.

2. To create and use a personal hashtag.

Hashtags to get reach

The good thing about LinkedIn hashtags is they display the number of followers on each hashtag.

Search for the hashtag. Visit hashtag's page. You can see the number of followers.

The result? It becomes incredibly easy to choose hashtags with the highest followers.

How many to choose?

I feel three hashtags per post is a good number. Anything above that, you're taking a risk.

I'll tell you why.

LinkedIn doesn't share your posts with all your followers.

It shows your content to around 10% of your audience in the first hour of posting, and based on the engagement you get, the algorithm pushes it further.

So when you use hashtags, LinkedIn shows your post to 10% of [your followers + hashtags' followers.]

It means the people who know you will not see your post in the first hour of posting—The people who can potentially interact with your content in the first hour are missing out, which might affect the reach as 24 hours pass.

Hence it is important to use hashtags to get more reach than usual, but it is also necessary to keep a balance so that your followers don't miss out on your content in the first hour.

Personal Hashtags

Personal hashtags on LinkedIn are USELESS.

First, let me define what personal hashtags are.

Why are personal hashtags useless?

LinkedIn hashtags were extremely efficient before mid-2021, but not anymore.

Why not after mid-2021?

'Coz Creator Mode happened!

Before creator mode

Earlier, when someone visits your profile, they can see your recent six activities. This includes the posts you've posted, commented on, liked, shared, etc.

So, if you engage with six posts after posting, your post is not visible on your profile.

The person who visited your profile had to click on your activity, go to posts, and then can consume your content.

It's too much workload that most visitors skip.

To counter this, creators created personal hashtags.

Personal hashtags drove more audience towards creators' content with minimal effort. Following creators' personal hashtags made accessing content easier [not by a big margin] as they didn't need to visit, go through the profile, click on the activity, and click on posts to consume or view content.

What changed with creator mode?

Creator mode basically removed the need for personal hashtags.

If your turn on the creator mode, whenever a person visits your profile, they see your recent six posts. The posts you've commented, liked, and shared are filtered out.

It means the people who visit your profile are most likely to view your content. This is how it looks to a visitor:

So you don't need to use a personal hashtag separately to gather all your posts in one place.

Why do I hate personal hashtags?

I'm not a big fan of splitting the audience in 2 different directions to view the same content.

I'd rather have all my audience directed towards one place.

But there's an algorithmic advantage to personal hashtags.

When LI sees people directed towards more of your assets (profile and hashtag), chances are it considers you good and pushes your content.

I prefer my audience's convenience over algorithmic advantage.

You can choose what you want from personal hashtags and opt whether you need to use them or not.

If not for the algorithm, where else can we use a personal hashtag?

Assume your name is Ironman, and you create content on diverse topics.

Let's consider these topics to be finance, sales, and marketing.

What do you do if someone wants to read only finance content from you?

You create a person hashtag, and you segmentize your content. Like this:

• #FinancebyIronman

• #SalesbyIronman

• #MarketingbyIronman

If a person or a segment of the audience wants only finance content from you, they'll follow the [#FinancebyIronman] hashtag over following your entire profile.

Even with segmented content, there is a risk of your audience pivoting in a different direction from your profile. But it's okay as long as it provides comfort to them.

"The easier you make it for your audience, the stronger your personal brand gets."

So that's my take on leveraging hashtags across multiple platforms as a creator.

Apart from this, you can create hashtags for campaigns or communities.

If you're running a meme contest, you create a hashtag and ask participants to use the hashtag while posting. This allows you to see all the posts together and evaluate them in one place.

The same goes for communities.

Campaigns are short-term. Communities are long-term.

So we end the technical segment here.

Time for us to get a little lighter and have some FUNN!!!

Non-Technical aka Fun Segment

Favourite quote from a book

Strange how few incidents trigger past experiences and push us into another dimension. We can completely misinterpret the present and relate it to our past, only to feel more disappointed.

Robert Greene suggests paying attention to triggers and consciously working on them decreases the chances of getting affected by the past.

Movie I watched this week

I rewatched Into The Wild this week and the movie is as deep as it can get.

The journey, the story, the dialogues, everything's heart touching!

It's a must-watch for all.

It's in English and is available on Netflix.

Tweets I loved

YouTube video I loved

If you have a crush on someone or are dating someone, I highly recommend this video.

Dr. Siddharth Warrier explains what happens to your brain and behaviour when you fall in love, so to speak.

It's a two-hour video. You'll love in-depth analysis.

Song I'm listening to on a loop

Chota Sa Fasana has a beautiful vibe, and Karwaan is a soulful film.

Do listen. It's refreshing.

Here we end Cognition #3.

I hope it's insightful.

I hope it's useful.

And I hope you've got something new to learn and reflect on.

Will be back next week!

Until then, take care, have fun, and take some time for your mental health.

Love,

Vikra Vardhan.

Enjoyed Cognition? You can always gift Vikra chocolates as a token of appreciation. He’s a BIGGG foodie. He loves to eat.