From an online marketing perspective, hashtags are a simple and useful way to boost your brand’s content on Twitter. The idea is that those interested in a certain topic will search for or click on a hashtag, giving you the opportunity to gain more exposure for your tweets. So it makes sense that Facebook would eventually incorporate hashtags into the site this past June, finally allowing clickable hashtags for members.
But here’s some bad news for those of you who have been diligently hashtagging every Facebook post: by doing so you could be decreasing the likelihood of your post going viral. The Facebook analytics firm EdgeRank Checker recently released a report on the success of Facebook hashtags, and overall found they don’t really do anything positive for your content.
EdgeRank Checker believes Facebook hashtags are failing because no one is clicking on them and the way they’re used by brands. Since many brands create hashtags through promotional campaigns, fans aren’t engaging and clicking through like they might for other more relatable hashtag topics.
A writer from Inside Facebook offers some great insight as to why hashtags were never going to work for the social media giant in the first place. He covers a few main points, but one that seems to stick out the most is that hashtags work well for personal discovery, but not so much for connecting with others. The whole purpose of Facebook is to connect with people, not necessarily learn more about new topics.
And just to be sure that Twitter hashtags really were as successful as they thought, EdgeRank Checker did additional research. The firm found that a hashtag roughly doubles the chance of your tweet getting retweeted.
What is your opinion on Facebook #hashtags? Let us know in the comments below!