Hashtags and handles can help increase a post's visibility and put content in front of a targeted audience, even if they haven’t connected with you. This can translate into more engagement, improved networking, and more customers for your business.

This article covers how to use hashtags and tagging to get the most from your shared content.

Hashtags

A hashtag (#) is a symbol used to connect posts on social media to other posts on the same subject or trending topic.

Posts that contain a hashtag receive a 22% higher click rate and a 63% higher engagement rate than those that don’t.

So how do you use them?

The most popular hashtags are sometimes not always the best hashtags to use. Try thinking of the topic of the article being shared and if it's being searched. For instance #socialselling or #personalbranding are topics that aren't too broad yet aren't too niche. See below for examples. 

Here are examples of the reach, exposure, and activity you can gain from adding a relevant hashtag to your share.

Tagging

A social media handle is a taggable public username used on social media accounts. Tagging adds a profile and its associated network to the post's viewership.

Twitter Tags

EveryoneSocial and Twitter have a relationship that allows you to tag a handle while creating the post. To do so, add a handle by typing the "@" symbol followed by the account name. An example would be @everyonesocial or @hbr. See below for an example of how you can tag others using handles.

LinkedIn Tags

LinkedIn does not currently allow us to have the opportunity to tag a profile directly inside of EveryoneSocial. Our team is in the process of building the ability to tag a company profile inside of the platform. You can follow the progress by clicking this link to the Product Roadmap. 

Tag a user profile in a LinkedIn post by sharing to LinkedIn and then edit the post on LinkedIn to tag the profile you want to include on the post.