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Are hashtags still relevant in 2024?
Short answer – Yes.
But social media has changed a lot over the last few years. And how people use hashtags today is evolving quickly.
Each social media platform has its own guidelines and strategies for hashtags.
What does that mean?
Depending on the platform you are posting on should dictate the types and amount of hashtags you use.
So, in this blog post, we’ll take a deep dive into the latest hashtag statistics and trends to help you understand the current landscape of social media and how hashtags fit into it.
Ready to get started?
Let’s dive in.
What Will I Learn?
Each social media platform processes hashtags in different ways to help users get the most benefit out of them.
These are the key hashtag statistics you need to know:
Hashtags are a big part of most social media platforms. The key is knowing how to use them properly.
Ready to get started with hashtags?
Below we have listed the latest hashtags statistics for each individual platform.
This will help you get the most benefit by giving you the latest stats showing how you should use hashtags on each platform.
Hashtags are essential to Twitter.
You could argue that hashtags make the most significant difference to reach and engagement on Twitter than on any other social media platform.
Here’s what I mean:
Twitter user statistics show that tweets with hashtags can increase engagement:
For example, if you create a tweet that normally gets about 120 post engagements, adding hashtags could increase that to 240 engagements.
That’s a pretty big difference!
The right number of hashtags to use per tweet is between 1 and 2.
Indeed, tweets that only include 1 to 2 relevant hashtags have a 55% higher chance of being retweeted by someone.
Any more than that can make the tweet look spammy and ultimately lower the reach and engagement it gets.
How much more?
Tweets that use more than 2 hashtags experience about 17% less engagement than tweets that use 2 or less hashtags.
There is no doubt that hashtags are essential to the Twitter platform – but just make sure you don’t overdo it.
A popular trend for Twitter advertisers over the last few years has been to include a couple of hashtags in sponsored ads.
But the latest hashtags statistics suggest otherwise…
Ads that DON’T include hashtags get 23% more engagement than those that do.
Meaning? Leave the hashtags to organic tweets only.
Wondering what are the most popular hashtags on Twitter?
Here is a list of the most popular tweeted hashtags ever from their related industry:
The #nowplaying hashtag has now been tweeted more than 1 billion times.
This hashtag is used to show what a user is currently:
Listening to
Watching
Playing
Another popular hashtag for businesses and brands collaborating with each other is #followfriday. It has been used on Twitter more than 500 million times!
If you get yourself featured in a #followfriday tweet, there’s a good chance you will pick up some new followers.
What are the most popular hashtags on Twitter in 2024?
Hubspot’s research found that the following hashtags are the most popular right now:
| Rank | Hashtag |
|---|---|
| 1 | #competition |
| 2 | #influencer |
| 3 | #influencermarketing |
| 4 | #fridayfeeling |
| 5 | #MondayMotivation |
| 6 | #tbt |
| 7 | #traveltuesday |
| 8 | #vegan |
| 9 | #fitness |
If your business posts relevant tweets to any of those hashtags, using them could be a great way to get more engagement, reach and followers.
Instagram is considered by some to be the OG of hashtags because of how important they are to the platform.
In the early years of development, Instagram took advantage of hashtags to help their users find similar content they would be interested in.
The good news is that hashtags are still just as effective on Instagram as they have ever been – especially if you don’t have a lot of followers.
Here’s what I mean:
Posts that include at least 1 hashtag get an average of 29% more interactions for accounts that have less than 1,000 total followers.
Posts that include 11+ hashtags have the highest interactions, with a 79.5% increase for accounts with less than 1,000 followers.
In this case – more is actually more!
But interestingly, longer hashtags tend to be better than shorter hashtags. Hashtags between 21 and 24 characters perform better than hashtags with less.
Think of longer hashtags like long-tail keywords in SEO.
They have:
…which could explain why they can be more effective to use on Instagram.
These days hashtags have also become a branding tool on Instagram, as people can follow particular hashtags with their profiles.
7 out of 10 Hashtags on Instagram today are considered branded.
Think about how you can start using branded hashtags to increase your followers!
Where should you place your hashtags?
The latest hashtags statistics are clear.
Using hashtags in your post captions can significantly increase your post’s reach on social media.
This is contrary to popular opinion.
If your profile has less than 5,000 followers, adding hashtags can get you 36% more reach on each post.
For profiles with 5,000 to 10,000 followers, the increase drops to 20%.
Similarly, if you have 10,000 to 50,000 followers, the increase is around 21%, and profiles with 50,000 to 100,000 followers receive an average of 21.43% more engagement per post when they use hashtags.
BUT:
Profiles with over 100,000 followers can increase their post reach by:
| Number of Followers | Hashtags Placement | Reach (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Less than 5,000 | Captation | +36% |
| 5,000-10,000 | Captation | +20% |
| 10,000-50,000 | Captation | +21% |
| 50,000-100,000 | Captation | +21.43% |
| More than 100,000 | Captation | +14% |
| More than 100,000 | First comment | +15.9% |
A total of 87% of brands prefer to put their hashtags in the caption. This is compared to just 12% that put hashtags in the comment section.
When you break it down by posts it’s even more…
Up to 90% of posts include hashtags in their caption vs just 10% that include them in their comments section.
Here’s what these hashtag statistics mean:
Ideally test which placement works best for your individual brand and compare the results!
What are the most used hashtags of all time on Instagram?
These are the top 10:
| Rank | Hashtag | Number of Uses |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | #love | 1.835B |
| 2 | #instagood | 1.150B |
| 3 | #fashion | 812.7M |
| 4 | #photooftheday | 797.3M |
| 5 | #beautiful | 661.0M |
| 6 | #art | 649.9M |
| 7 | #photography | 583.1M |
| 8 | #happy | 578.8M |
| 9 | #picoftheday | 570.8M |
| 10 | #cute | 569.1M |
These are the hashtags that have been used by people the most ever since hashtags launched on Instagram in 2010.
Does Facebook have hashtags?
Short answer – Yes.
But they aren’t as common as other platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
Facebook launched the use of hashtags on the platform in 2013 and while they are less effective than other platforms, Facebook statistics show that they can still increase reach and engagement.
The thing to remember about hashtags on Facebook is “less is more”.
That’s very different from Instagram.
Using only 1 hashtag in a post on Facebook results in an average of 593 engagements per post.
If you use 3 to 5 hashtags, the average engagement drops to 416 while posts with 6 to 10 hashtags receive an average engagement of 307.
In contrast, posts with more than 10 hashtags get the lowest average engagement per post, with only 188.
| Number of Hashtags | Average Engagement |
|---|---|
| 1 | 593 |
| 3-5 | 416 |
| 6-10 | 307 |
| 10+ | 188 |
You can see that the more hashtags you use, the lower your engagement is.
This is likely because posts with too many hashtags look:
People aren’t willing to engage or even read these kinds of posts.
The key to getting the most out of hashtags with Facebook is using just one highly relevant hashtag per post.
Try to use the same hashtags regularly so that people following these hashtags on Facebook get used to seeing your content.
If you aren’t taking advantage of hashtags on LinkedIn – you should be.
They have been increasingly popular over the last few years.
LinkedIn even conducted their own hashtag study in 2018 to see how people were utilising them.
People primarily use hashtags to follow specific topics.
This is good news for you because using a hashtag is a great way to reach your target audience outside your network.
LinkedIn’s own recommendations based on their studies is to use hashtags on LinkedIn to-
LinkedIn also recommends using no more than 3 hashtags in one post. More than this can lower your reach and make your posts look spammy.
Hashtags should be placed at the bottom of each post and you should aim to use 1 niche hashtag and 2 broader industry hashtags.
This has been proven to generate the most reach.
These are the most popular hashtags on LinkedIn by follower count right now:
| Rank | Hashtag | Number of Followers (In Million) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | #India | 67.6 |
| 2 | #Innovation | 38.8 |
| 3 | #Management | 36 |
| 4 | #HumanResources | 33.2 |
| 5 | #DigitalMarketing | 27.4 |
| 6 | #Technology | 26.4 |
| 7 | #Creativity | 25.2 |
| 8 | #Future | 24.6 |
| 9 | #Futurism | 23.5 |
| 10 | #Entrepreneurship | 22.7 |
LinkedIn also has a feature that shows trending hashtags in your network. Take advantage of these hashtags when relevant.
TikTok user statistics show that TikTok now has more than 1 billion monthly active users – which makes the platform one of the world’s fastest-growing social media sites.
On top of that:
TikTok has been downloaded more than 2.6 billion times to date.
In June 2020 – TikTok was downloaded 87 million times worldwide posting a record for the company.
There is no doubt this platform is here to stay!
And the good news is that hashtags are extremely popular on TikTok. They have become an essential part of the platform.
The most popular hashtag right now is #fyp which stands for “for your page”.
It has the most views of all hashtags, amassing almost 35 trillion views across all posts using it.
#foryou and #foryoupage are the second and third most popular hashtags on TikTok right now, with 21.1 trillion and 13.3 trillion total views.
Interestingly all of the top 3 hashtags on TikTok are based on the same thing.
Other popular hashtags on Tiktok right now include:
| Hashtag | Number of Views (In Trillion) |
|---|---|
| #viral | 12.9 |
| #tiktok | 4.2 |
| #trending | 3 |
| #duet | 3 |
| #funny | 2.6 |
| #commedy | 1.9 |
| #trend | 1.6 |
| #humor | 1.5 |
| #greenscreen | 1.2 |
| #annime | 1.1 |
| #love | 1 |
Using any of the top hashtags in your own posts can increase your engagement and reach.
Like other popular social media platforms, you can follow hashtags on TikTok.
This has become an essential feature for users as people tend to follow hashtags similarly to how they follow individual accounts.
What does this mean?
Hashtags are so crucial to the platform that if you aren’t using hashtags in your captions – you are missing out.
Research suggests that you should use at least 3-5 hashtags per post, but you can use more if you want.
Just make sure they are relevant.
Here’s the truth:
When a movement goes viral online, hashtags are usually a big part of it.
So below are some hashtag statistics and facts I though you would like to know. Most of them have very interesting backstories!
The hashtag #metoo has been used over 19 million times since Alyssa Milano first used it in a tweet in 2017.
It was created to bring attention to the issue of sexual harassment in our society.
Back in 2014, the #icebucketchallenge hashtag was used to promote a challenge associated with the ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) Association.
This hashtag has since been used over 6 million times and the challenge it helped promote ended up raising over $115 million for ALS.
Huge, right?
The #blacklivesmatter hashtag has been used over 12 million times since its inception in 2013.
The movement originated as a campaign against systemic racism and has become one of the most well-known movements of our modern generation.
#LoveWins has been used over 12.8 million times across social media platforms.
It gained widespread popularity on June 26, 2015, when the US Supreme Court legalised gay marriage, prompting a wave of posts with #LoveWins on social media.
The #Sandy hashtag was used over 7.2 million times in late 2012 when Hurricane Sandy devastated the US East Coast.
Scientists also leveraged the hashtag to quickly assess the damage and provide assistance during the disaster response.
Even government departments and organisations use hashtags to help monitor situations.
The #PrayforJapan hashtag was used over 4 million times in March 2011 when an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, killing almost 2,000 people.
The hashtag was used to give support and communicate solidarity with the victims of this massive natural disaster.
#Ferguson has been used over 27.2 million times in association with the 2014 protests that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown by the police on August 9 that year.
| Hashtag | Number of Uses (In Million) | Story Behind The Hashtag |
|---|---|---|
| #metoo | 19 | Created in 2017 to bring attention to the issue of sexual harassment in our society. |
| #icebucketchallenge | 6 | Created in 2014 to promote a challenge associated with the ALS Association. |
| #blacklivesmatter | 12 | Created in 2013 to fight against systemic racism in our society. |
| #LoveWins | 12.8 | Became popular in 2015 when the US Supreme Court legalised gay marriage. |
| #Sandy | 7.2 | Created in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy devastated the US East Coast. |
| #PrayforJapan | 4 | Created in 2011 when an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck Japan. |
| #Ferguson | 27.2 | Created in 2014 during theprotests that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri. |
What’s the big takeaway from all of these general hashtag statistics?
Hashtags connect people to relevant content and other like-minded people.
Whether you are involved in a large social moment or just trying to reach the right audience with your post – hashtags are effective.
Almost all the major social media platforms use them in some capacity!
Hashtags are an essential part of social media and if you aren’t taking advantage of them – you aren’t in the conversation online!
The latest hashtag statistics show that hashtags are still an integral part of social media. And that’s not going to change anytime soon!
They help users discover content that interests them and make it easier for businesses to reach their target audience.
Hashtags are also at the heart of large movements online.
The key to taking advantage of hashtags is having the right strategy for each platform you post on regularly.
This will help you:
Take the time to analyse and find the popular hashtags in your industry or niche.
Remember:
Don’t overuse hashtags in your posts. This can lead to a significant decrease in post-engagement and reach
Put together a well-thought-out strategy that takes advantage of hashtags for your brand and business.
Want more statistics posts? Take a look at these blogs:
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