Statista

Have you ever stared at a draft social media post, debating which hashtags to use, and how many? New data from Social Media company SocialBakers suggests that exercising restraint when applying #hashtags to social media posts may help increase engagement. The company used a sample of 200,000 social media posts from brands in the month of February, and came up with the statistics in the chart you see above. Statista's chart shows that social media posts with numerous hashtags experienced less engagement than those that used fewer. The average engagement for posts with 1-2 hashtags was 593, and that number dips all the way to an average of 188 for posts with more than 10 hashtags. Hashtags are marked by using the number symbol, #, to denote a searchable keyword. The first known use of a hashtag was on Twitter came from a social technology expert Chris Messina, known as @MrMessina on the social network. In August of 2007 (roughly 17 months after the very first Tweet), Messina sent out a tweet saying “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”. Messina's idea was to help organize Twitter, so that users could more easily find relevant tweets. Interestingly enough, Hashtag.org posits that Twitter founder Evan Williams actually told @MrMessina that hashtags would not catch on because of their technical nature (# has a long history of use in programming languages). Twitter hashtags grown into a versatile tool that is used for numerous different purposes. Brands use them to engage users and incite affinity, individuals use them to express the content or nature of their tweet (#selfie, #TGIF, etc). Increasingly, media outlets and Twitter users are utilizing hashtags for important events and news. The use of hashtags has spread to other social networks as well, and are now used frequently on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Instagram, and even LinkedIn. Do you use hashtags in your business's tweets? Let us know what you think is the perfect # of #hashtags via #Facebook, #Google+, #Twitter and #LinkedIn. Source: Mashable, Image Credit (Statista)