Do Facebook Hashtags Increase Local Reach?

Hashtags on Facebook?  Yep, they're a thing now and Facebook is working hard to encourage you to use them.  But if you're trying to reach a local audience is it worth the trouble?  Will it improve your reach and engagement? 

We wanted to find out so we did some research for our community of local business owners and marketers, the Member's Club.  Today we're sharing a bit of that research to help local marketers across the country.

During September and October of 2020, we found that when reaching local audiences only, the use of hashtags on posts increased the organic reach by an average of 8%. 

Our results also found that average post engagement with hashtags increased very marginally in some markets by a couple of percentage points. 

WHERE TO START WITH HASHTAGS?

So if you're considering jumping into hashtags, a few recommendations. 

1. Include 5+ hashtags in each post – at least two local, at least two content-specific, and at least one that is a branded hashtag, just for your business.
2. Do your research to find the best hashtags. When creating a post in Facebook, type in # and start typing your tag.  Facebook will tell you how many posts contain that specific tag, helping you determine what is most popular.
3. Put hashtags in the post itself, not the first comment as is sometimes done on Instagram. When posts are shared on FB, those comments don't travel with them and you want the hashtags to stay with the post.
4. Keep your hashtags all in one spot at the bottom of the post, not embedded within the body of the post itself. Your FB posts should be encouraging users to do something – read an article, visit a website, register, learn more – and embedded hashtags prior to that call to action will cause some users to click away and explore other content with that tag before they reach the end of your post.  Keep them engaged with your content before they start venturing into other areas of the platform.

BOTTOM LINE

Hashtags may provide a slight increase in organic post reach and possibly engagement on a local level.  Once you figure out what hashtags to use, it doesn't take much time to add them to your posts. 

But if you're already struggling to come up with a consistent posting strategy and don't want to add anything new to your plate, don't stress about hashtags - for now.