When it comes to growing your business on LinkedIn, we see the full range of hashtag usage on LinkedIn. We see people going after the big hashtags with millions of followers, and also hashtags with one or zero followers. And they’re doing it all wrong! Today, we’re gonna unlock LinkedIn hashtags and how to use hashtags on LinkedIn. And give you a step-by-step process for how to identify the best hashtags to get in front of the people you want to see your posts!
Before we move on, we have to unlock two categories of hashtags that are extremely misunderstood.
Personal Branded Hashtag
The first category is you wanna have a personal branded hashtag that is a whole different category than your niche hashtags. Let’s start with unlocking this. The simple thing is, you just start using it, and tell your audience to follow it. You may be starting this hashtag from zero and that is okay. You’re gonna grow it quickly with the tips we’re gonna share with you! For example, we typed in #foxrocks in the search bar and discovered that less than 10 people were following it and only one post within the last six months.That is a great indication that the hashtag is open for your personal branded use.
Niche Hashtags
The second category of hashtags is your niche hashtags. This is where you’re going to search for hashtags that are followed by your ideal audience. Those are people that are gonna give your initial content visibility and come back and like and comment on all of your posts.
LinkedIn Hashtag Placement
Now that we’ve gotten those two categories out of the way, we can go into LinkedIn hashtags and where do they live on LinkedIn?
Posts
The most obvious place people put hashtags is in their posts. What I see people do is either put them at the bottom of the post or use them within the text of the post. I recommend that you only use them at the bottom of the post. The reason why is as you are using hashtags within the text of the post, they become hyperlinks and you could risk your audience clicking off of your posts.
Another mistake we wanna point out is that hashtags do not work in the comments. So they do need to be in the post of your content to be able to get reach for that post. What we recommend for how many hashtags to use is less than 10. Ideally, from a visual standpoint, it’s good to keep it to two lines of hashtags so it does not become overwhelming for the audience to see. Everyone just lumps LinkedIn hashtags into one big blue blob and that is not gonna work for you.
Personal Profile
The other place LinkedIn just created for your hashtags is within your personal profile, you can turn on a new feature called creator mode. You can highlight your content within five featured hashtags. This is why we recommend to stay below 10 hashtags, so you can get more traction within your top five LinkedIn hashtags.
Company Page
The other place that LinkedIn hashtags are used and featured is on your company page. The company page gives you three hashtags that you’re telling LinkedIn that you want your content to be trending in.
There are additional places where your personal branded hashtag is going to go on LinkedIn and we’ll go over that. But first, let’s stick with the niche hashtags and go over how to research that.
How to Find and Choose Niche Hashtags
This is the misunderstood part about going after huge hashtags such as #entrepreneur, #marketing, #social media. Those hashtags have millions of followers, millions of potential people posting. To those hashtags, you are just a tiny blip on that hashtag newsfeed. So stop using the huge hashtags and benefit from what we’re about to tell you about the niche hashtags. Pick smaller ones, especially if you’re just getting started. Because you can actually dominate those hashtags, go trending, get visibility and gain an audience of people who want to see your posts.
When you’re researching to find these five to 10 niche hashtags, look for any hashtags that are below 10,000 followers. You can also scroll the newsfeed of that hashtag to see if you are in good company. For example, there are other similar posts that are complementary. And that the current content in that hashtag is getting great engagement, and look for audience participation that is from your ideal client.
There are a few ways to find hashtags on LinkedIn to use for your business. The first one is to type it in the search bar. And then scroll down the newsfeed to see if a great post got really good reach. For example, a hundred likes and comments, and see what other hashtags that person used within their post.
Niche Hashtag Growth Tip
Once you’ve identified your top 10 hashtags that are all under 10,000 followers, a really great strategy for you is instead of just using them on your posts, go out as a company or as a personal profile and go and engage in those hashtags. Like and comment and follow the hashtags that you are using. That will help generate a huge circle of potential audience members that are gonna help boost your visibility for every single post that you create.
Community Hashtags
Now, we’ve gone over your niche hashtag and we’re about to get into your branded hashtag. But wait! There is a third category – community hashtags. Those are for either short term type of movements, events or conferences that you’re attending. Those hashtags last potentially for only a week to a month. You wanna jump on those right when they happen and join the conversation and be engaged as a brand.
The Power of Personal Branded Hashtag
Here is where we get really excited for brands on LinkedIn, the power of the branded personal hashtag. And the biggest issue that people have when using their branded hashtag is they lump it in with this big blue blob. They’ve got this beautiful branded hashtag and it means nothing in that big blue blob of hashtags.
So start creating a conversation around it. Give people a reason to follow it and give them a call to action around it. Make people recognise it and feel something when they come across it. That is the power of a branded hashtag.
Where to Use Your Personal Branded Hashtag
The first place that you are going to use it is obviously in your content. You’re gonna have a phrase that says something like “Follow #foxrocks for more #foxrocks fun!” Something that allows people to realize it is a different hashtag and something for them to follow.
The second place that you can use your branded hashtag is in your call to action in your tagline of your company page. You can also start generating more visibility across all of your employees’ posts. If you can, get your staff to use the same branded hashtag and put that hashtag in all your LinkedIn profiles.
And another really powerful place to use your branded hashtag is in the direct messages. It creates a quick and easy hyperlink to direct people to your company content. The exciting thing is once you grow your personal branded hashtag, it incentivises the entire audience that is currently liking and commenting and engaging on your posts to create original content about your brand and your company. It is so powerful to have this personal branded hashtag live beyond your original posts and content!
And here’s the mic drop moment. What other people say about working with you is more powerful than what you can sometimes say about yourself inside of your own content. So start using your personal branded hashtag because it’s gonna change your entire experience on LinkedIn!
