Facebook Introduces Hashtags

It’s official: Facebook now supports hashtags. While this new feature is still unavailable to many users, we have a pretty good idea of how this will affect our social conversations from her on out. Read on to learn more about what this could mean for you and your business!

Source: Mashable.com

What are hashtags?Gone are the days when when # was called a “pound” sign. Now when we tweet or post a word or phrase with a hashtag preceding it, we’re not just adding random symbols to take up space; we’re indexing it so that it can be easily found by other social media users. Twitter, Instagram, and, more recently, Google+ have already incorporated hashtags into their sites, so it was only a question of time for when Facebook would do the same.

Why did Facebook decide to incorporate hashtags into their site?By incorporating hashtags into their site, Facebook hopes to make it easier to search for relevant conversations. For brands, this means adding relevant hashtags to posts and photos so that they can be easily discovered by a much wider audience – not just their fans. For people like you and me who use personal profiles, adding hashtags to your public updates makes it easier for people who are not your friends but are searching for that word or phrase to see your post. By adding hashtags to the site, Facebook has made it easier discover conversations, engage with others, share content, and locate brands. Note: if you’re not familiar with public vs. private updates, learn about this important Facebook feature HERE.

What could this mean for me?Let’s say you post a public update on your personal profile about your favorite Isotonix® product and include a hashtag, like #fitness, #health or #nutrition. By including a relevant hashtag, you become part of an ongoing conversation about health, fitness, or nutrition, and made it possible for users who are not connected to you to find your post (and vice versa!). Think of all the possibilities that are available to you now that you can easily discover conversations and people that are relevant to you and your business!

As mentioned, Facebook is still working on rolling out hashtag support to all of its users. We will keep our ears and eyes open for more information about how you can use this feature to build your business, so stay tuned!