The One With All The Hashtags

I never really paid much attention to my analytics on social media. Most platforms I use only have analytic tracking for Business accounts or those with many more followers than I have. Through the Knowledge Sharing assignment, I started to look closely at the analytics provided by Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. I was lost on what the terms meant at first. Engagements, Impressions. Audience. All seemed the same to me. Yes, I used the little question mark to toggle over and read about each term. It was pretty cool how you can see how many times each Tweet, Pin, or post was viewed versus how many times people actually interacted or engaged with your content through saves, clicks, likes, retweets, etc. This got me thinking, how did so many people find my content when they do not follow me on these platforms. Then it came to me.. #hashtags!

For my assignment, I focused on travel. The content I shared on Instagram and Twitter was my own picture and links to my own travel blog. By using common hashtags like #travel #miami #italy, that attracted people to my post outside of the followers of my account. 

For those unfamiliar, you can click on a hashtag and see posts for others who used that same tag, as long as their account is public. Many influencers and companies rely on hashtags to bring in large audiences and followings to their posts. Throughout this assignment I was concern with how I would get viewers as my blog and my social media accounts were so new with very little following outside my classmates but by using hashtags I was able to get many more viewers to my posts than I had expected. 

Hashtags allow people to find posts relevant to their interests and can help you engage with other social media users who have similar interests. Hashtags are a great way to increase your social media following. Through third party extensions you can even track your hashtag data!