What is a hashtag ?

A hashtag is a word or a group of words preceded by the # character (pound sign) in a publication. Clickable, hashtags allow a user to be referred to posts dealing with the same subject. They are used in publications on websites and social networks.

Twitter is the platform that popularized the hashtag, precisely in 2007. Immediately, this usage was successful. Its use is no longer limited to Twitter, but extends to other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Telegram.

What is the interest of using hashtags ?

Since its first use, the hashtag has evolved a lot. It allows to :

* Get more engagement with your online community 
By adding a hashtag to your publication, it gains visibility and popularity, through the different reactions of the public (likes, shares, comments, etc.).

* Promote your brand or support a cause
You want to promote your brand or make it more popular on the web? Creating a hashtag can help you achieve this goal. Also, you can support a social cause through a hashtag.

For example, the hashtag #TousEnBleu is regularly used on World Autism Day. So, you can create your hashtag to spread your brand and or get new followers.

You can learn to use hashtags well !

Using hashtags specific to your industry or a particular theme can be beneficial to your business. To find the right hashtags for your brand, you'll need to:
- Monitor what your competitors are doing to know what keywords they are using and how they are interacting with their audience, 
- Understand how each social network uses hashtags to keep track of new trends or popular expressions.
- Use key phrase suggestion tools that will allow you to gauge the popularity of an expression: TagsFinder, AllHashtag, Hashtagify.me, Photerloo, Sistrix among others.
- Use a reduced number of words: #Prosygma for example seems more digestible than a long sentence like "#Prosygmayourcomputersoftwareprovider".

Vanessa Ntoh