This Week in Social Media | Yep, #hashtags!
Social Media is always changing, it’s a moving target that is nearly impossible to keep on top of, and that’s why we are publishing a semi-weekly entry in our blog that aggregates social media news, insights and updates from across the world wide web. We will narrow it to the hits we think are most relevant, will highlight key points and add some perspective to help you understand “so what?”
Week of January 18, 2021:
Using Hashtags on LinkedIn? Adding Stories? You betcha!
Arguably a result of the pandemic and an insurgence of people working from home, LinkedIn usage is continuing to grow rapidly. While many are looking for new work and opportunities, others are simply using LinkedIn as a channel to stay connected with their fellow colleagues, to stay engaged and in the know. Over the course of the pandemic, there has been a dramatic shift in the content that people are posting to LinkedIn. What was once a platform used for strictly business, has evolved into a place where users can openly post about hardships, career challenges, and general everyday endeavors. LinkedIn is also bolstering its efforts to raise engagement on the app through putting a bigger emphasis on hashtags, adding a stories feature (well, them and every other social media platform), and allowing users to post polls.
So what does all of this mean for marketers? Baking LinkedIn into your organic marketing strategy for 2021 could prove to be quite valuable for your brand in 2021. Content that was once business professional by nature can now be more approachable, informal, and casual in tone. Out of the LinkedIn engagement features, we believe that hashtags are going to play an important role in a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy. While there may not be an optimal number of hashtags to use on your posts, including several that are relevant to your content or brand and do not affect the readability of your post will certainly be beneficial in helping your content gain exposure and connect you with people who may be interested in your brand. Do not be afraid to use trending hashtags alongside your branded hashtags as well, as long as they are applicable to your content. As LinkedIn usage numbers continues to grow, trend spotting and leveraging will continue to be paramount.
YouTube Launches New … yup, you guessed it, Hashtag Search Results Pages
And just when you thought you’d heard enough about em’, YouTube has also recently revamped their approach to hashtags; when searching specific hashtags on mobile or desktop, users will not see a dedicated page that only contains videos with said hashtag. As of right now, YouTube has stated that the order of the search results page is being sorted by “best” videos. This likely means that the videos at the top of the hashtag results will be those that are currently trending and receiving high rates of views and engagement. For the time being, this puts smaller channels and brands at a disadvantage, but does not necessarily mean that you will not be found. Similar to Instagram, Youtube also includes a count at the top of each hashtag page, showing users how many videos have been published with this hashtag. This can be quite helpful for marketers when looking for what is trending on YouTube.
While the hashtags pages are still fairly rustic, YouTube states that it will continue to develop this feature in the future, which could potentially make YouTube hashtags a key player in YouTube marketing. One of the ways that we see YouTube hashtags being potentially beneficial is leveraging cross platform hashtags. Once trending hashtags are spotted on YouTube, they can be pulled and applied for relevant content on other platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, or vice versa. Also, niche brands will have the opportunity to corner their market through owning certain hashtags. We like to use the example of educational videos; an outdoor gear brand who specializes in tents can post video tutorials on proper setups or repairs, using hashtags such as #setupmytent or #fixmytentsrainfly.
Instagram Tests Adding Timers to Stories to Boost Engagement
As if we didn’t have enough cues in our life reminding us we are running out of time...Instagram is testing a new feature where the duration of the time left before a story disappears is listed below the story itself on user’s feeds. For instance, if a story has been up for 8 hours, the timer will show 16 hours left, because stories have a shelf life of 24 hours. Instagram hopes to increase stories views and engagement through this new feature by inducing FOMO in users; if they see that they only have a limited amount of time left to view stories, they are more likely to view them now. Or, at least that is their hypothesis.
There are things to keep in mind about this new story addition. The first is that if two or more stories are posted on a user’s Instagram within the same 24 hour period, we still do not know which time stamp will be displayed below the story. We assume the story that was posted first, but I guess we will have to just wait and see. The second is that the example screenshot used in the article does not have the stories listed in chronological order. Instagram has yet to fully explain the algorithm behind the order that their stories are displayed, but we can see from this example that the time it was posted is not the only factor playing a role.