Deborah SweeneyFacebook has recently unveiled one of its newest features to get you to update your status more frequently. Ever been stumped on what to update your company’s status to? Well, fret no longer. When creating a status, Facebook now gives a list of the top trending hashtags as inspiration. This brings up one of the many social media dilemmas: how many hashtags is too many? While they started on Twitter originally, hashtags have recently become as great way for businesses to connect with their target audiences on multiple social media platforms. While it’s clear some hashtags can be very beneficial, too many can be seen as desperate and unprofessional.
2-10. Instagram is known as the creative social media outlet for companies. While the main focus of the post should be the photo, hashtags are used in the platform to group similar photos together. As there is no word count, the hashtag culture on Instagram has grown to accept more hashtags than other social media platforms. With that being said, any more than ten hashtags is too many. More than 10 hashtags on Instagram can look desperate for attention and can take the focus away from the photo. You want to effectively connect with your target audience without looking like spam. Too many hashtags can often look unprofessional and can lead to a decrease in followers.
1-2. Even though Facebook is pushing users to use more hashtags, the optimum number is still relatively 
low. Facebook was one of the later adopters of this technology and subsequently the hashtag culture is very limited in the platform. While the hashtags do group similar posts, the main use for hashtags on the platform is through the use of the trending topics. The trending topics are one of the most clicked on aspects of the homepage and are definitely an opportunity for companies to address the topics while promoting their products. In all, the best option is to use hashtags that relate not only to your target audience but also to the trending news of your target audience.
1-4. Twitter is the original hashtag home stadium. The hashtag culture is very developed and there is a clear necessity for their use. In fact, the lack of hashtags is seen as a weakness. Twitter and Facebook use hashtags with a similar categorical importance. This means that the sole purpose of your business hashtags should be to categorize your post not only to your audience, but also topically, as that fits with the Twitter hashtag culture. The main difference between Twitter and the other social media platforms is their character count. By having a 140 character maximum, the amount of hashtags used should still be relatively low as they are counted with the other text.
When it doubt, use between two and three hashtags on any social media platform. Although it is socially acceptable to use more on certain platforms, the value beyond three hashtags simply isn’t worth the possible costs. The important thing to remember when using hashtags is to make the hashtag generic enough for it to have other posts or photos linked with it, but also to be specific enough and creative enough to captivate the target audience. Hashtags have proved themselves worthy of our attention, now we just have to learn how to use them correctly.
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