Updated: September 6, 2017
Yesterday Facebook announced that they have finally decided to play nice with people who feel compelled to use hashtags. A hashtag, for those that are a little behind, provides a handy way for others to discover your content and provides a way for social media outlets to catalog topics and develop lists of topics that are “trending”. For instance, if you wanted to discuss web design in a Facebook post, and wanted other people to know how you feel about the topic you might use the hashtag #webdesign somewhere in your post.
Too little too late?
Anyone who has ever used (or misused) hashtags on Twitter or Instagram knows how handy they can be to discover new people and new content. Because Facebook and Twitter view user privacy in two different ways (Twitter is a soap box for the whole world to see you, whereas Facebook allows tight control of who gets to see your content), the jury is still out on how useful hashtags on Facebook will be. So who will be using them? And more importantly, HOW will they use them?
- Businesses and fan pages: Probably the biggest beneficiary to Facebook’s hashtags, businesses who share all (or most) of their content with the public will be able to create, join and add to topics across Facebook.
- The Narcisit: Never in history has it been so easy for almost anyone to have a platform from which to
proselityzedeliver their message. The Facebook evangelist will now be able to reach a larger audience by changing privacy settings on their Facebook posts, hopefully engaging others interested in the same topic. - Discussing a topic among interested friends: It is always a crapshoot as to whether or not any of your friends wants to discuss what you are posting. By utilizing hashtags you will be able to include only interested parties in your conversation.
In addition to the above uses, Facebook has also said that hashtags will be searchable across other social media outlets like Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter as well. They have also made it clear that hashtags are just the first step in several changes in the coming months.
“To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook.”
It’s all about the Benjamins
The naysayers who complain that Facebook is arriving late to the party are missing a very important point: Facebook has struggled with monetization for several years and hashtags are the next logical step following the expansion of its Graph Search feature in January. The goal with hashtags is not necessarily to expand the advertiser’s audience so much as it is to concentrate a lot of similar eyeballs in one place, making the ROI for advertisers much more predictable. Anyone who has ever tried Facebook advertising can tell you how maddening it is to try to measure your success. This new feature should help bring things in to focus for advertisers, which will likely open new revenue streams from advertisers who were afraid to spend their money on Facebook in the past.
We will be on the lookout for interesting and effective way to use this new tool. If you spot any cool hashtags in the wild be sure to let us know!