Even if you are an occasional user of social media, you have witnessed countless #hashtags. In the past, hashtags included in LinkedIn posts did nothing more than demonstrate the user didn’t fully understand the capabilities of the platform. That’s about to change.
LinkedIn has brought back the use of hashtags to enhance the experience of all 450 million users that use the social platform dubbed the “business-oriented” social networking service.
“Welcome to the Internet, LinkedIn. It’s about time,” said Smirk strategist Michaela Brandt. “Long past are the days since hashtags were reserved only for Twitter.”
As a LinkedIn user, you can include hashtags in anything you write. Whether that is an advertisement a brand sends out, an article you write, or a simple message to a friend congratulating them on a new job — adding a hashtag to your post creates conversation for brands and people. Hashtags organize similar content, which lets any of LinkedIn’s 450 million users find your articles quicker. Using hashtags in a clever way can really skyrocket your following. At any time you may modify your privacy settings in order to monitor who may read your articles.
On the opposite end, when searching for articles, ideas, jobs, or people, hashtags make it easy. With the ability to tap these hashtags, you can find specific needs or explore related information. After finding search results, you can pick other related posts or use that hashtag to participate in the conversation. Like other social platforms, only public posts using the hashtag will be shown in search.
“Frankly, tracking conversations and topics through hashtags just makes sense, especially on a professional platform where topics often revolve around industry and trades,” said Brandt. “Whether or not they’ll be used often or well is still up in the air, but it’s one of the platforms where hashtags make sense for the benefit of the user and publisher alike.”
Although accessible on the desktop version, hashtag use was designed for its iOS & Android apps. LinkedIn knows that the majority of its users are strictly mobile and the small percentage of users who use the desktop version are generally people who are not using hashtags in the first place.
Before this upgrade, searching for content was difficult. When looking for an article, you had to go to the author’s individual profile and swipe through before finding the content. Now, hashtags cut down on search time, making it easier for users to find what they are interested in.
LinkedIn says this update is just the beginning. This is an important step to make sure that its entire library of resources is being utilized and made available to more users. Although 450 million people call themselves LinkedIn users, only a quarter of them visit the site on a monthly basis and this is just one of the ways this platform is trying to re-engage its user base on a more regular basis.