What Is a Hashtag?

Hashtag definition

A hashtag is a word or phrase introduced by the symbol #, that classifies the associated text and shows what is the topic of a message on social media.

To say so, it is a type of metadata tag used on social media platforms such as Instagram, Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as other microblogging services. In other words, hashtags allow users to apply dynamic, user-generated tagging that will help other people easily and quickly find messages with a particular topic. It’s actually so simple: users just have to place the hash symbol in front of a word or phrase in order to create and use hashtags.

What is the history of the hashtag?

The hashtag symbol came into existence around the 14th century. Before it was used on social media, the symbol came from “lb,” which represents the Latin abbreviation for “pound”.

Actually,  it was called a hashtag only when it became popular on social media. The hashtag symbol was first used (with the purpose of finding posts with a common theme) in a tweet in 2007. Today we have the possibility to use hashtags on every social media platform.

For example, let’s take Instagram. You’ve probably seen countless Instagram posts with endless hashtags – and that’s because this works best for this platform.

Why should you use hashtags?

First of all, we can’t stress enough how important it is to always use hashtags on Instagram because if you use relevant tags, you’ll get approximately 12.6% more engagement.

In fact, research shows that Instagram posts with 11 hashtags provide the most engagement. There is also a limit: 30 hashtags per post. However, most likely you don’t need to use that many hashtags.

In case you have no more hashtag ideas for your posts, you can use a hashtag generator. There are many free tools that can automatically generate hashtags for your social media posts in seconds. This way you get to choose from thousands of relevant hashtags.