A 4-Step Guide to Using Hashtags Effectively on LinkedIn

Author Rachel Strella @RachelStrella

It may be hard to believe, but hashtags have been fully integrated into LinkedIn for well over a year. But despite the staying power of hashtags on the platform, many businesses still struggle with how to best use them to grow their audiences and generate engagement.

In this post, I want to remove that confusion by answering several common questions about using hashtags on LinkedIn. So, if you’ve been wondering what's up with LinkedIn hashtags, this overview is for you.

What's the value of using LinkedIn hashtags?

Much like on Twitter and Instagram, hashtags on LinkedIn are a way to categorize your posts, and differentiate them from the rest of the content being uploaded to the platform each day.

By adding hashtags, you make it easier for users searching for content about specific topics (or who are following the hashtag) to find your posts.

1) When should I use hashtags on LinkedIn?

Adding hashtags on LinkedIn is all about finding your sweet spot. Using a long list of hashtags in each post is best saved for Instagram. In general, Twitter best practices suggest a maximum of three to four hashtags per post, which is closer to what you want to aim for when posting to LinkedIn.

Also, hashtags should be specific to your post, not just your brand. More likely than not, people aren’t going to be searching for a branded hashtag on LinkedIn - instead, they’ll be searching for hashtags related to their industry or interests. For example, marketing guru Mark Schaefer weaves hashtags into his LinkedIn posts sparingly but with great impact. When sharing his speaker reel on the platform, he included just two hashtags at the end: #marketing and #keynotespeaker.

By including #marketing, he's tapping into the broad industry that he appeals to, and establishing that he’s a marketing speaker. By adding #keynotespeaker, he’s not only identifying one of his key strengths and business services, but he's also helping people to find his posts if they’re searching for keynote speakers.

Steps 2-4 and the complete Social Media Today article