What’s the Hashtag?

A hashtag is used on social media to make it easy to find posts or information with a theme or that contain specific content. It is created by including the symbol “#” before a word or words without spaces

What is the TREND

When the number of views and participations in a particular hashtag increases within a certain time and a specific geographical area, it jumps to the statistic of the best-trending topics, and in this case it is called a TREND. A global trend is a topic that has garnered interest and participation from different geographic locations during a specific period of time

Why I should use hashtags?

There are several reasons why you may want to use hashtags, and we will mention the main uses of them in our time:

1. Marketing and Reach

If you have a product, practice a certain hobby, or want to invite the public to a specific event, you can use popular hashtags or create a hashtag for your brand or your event. Example: You want to market your graphic design services, you can use hashtags like: #Graphicdesign #illustration #Digitalart

2. Collecting information

If you want to share information or photos to a specific topic, you can also use the hashtag after writing the information or posting the photo. Example: You want to provide information about hiking, you can use hashtags like: #Hiking #mountains #Hikingadventures

3. Raising awareness and Mobilizing public opinion

If there is a social, political, moral cause or event … etc., and you want to raise awareness and mobilize public opinions globally or locally to support it, you can also use the hashtag. Example: There are many public causes that have mobilized millions of supporters using hashtags like: #GazaUnderAttack #BlackLivesMatter #IceBucketChallenge

4. Call for Action

You can also use hashtags to invite people or influencers and authorities to take certain actions, and when a large number of people support a hashtag, it turns into a trend and it becomes like an online protest, it often forces decision-makers to respond. Example: There are many call for action hashtag trends like: #SaveSheikhJarrah #BringBackOurGirls

How to use Hashtags?

– Use hashtags mainly on Twitter and Instagram because the two platforms use the the feature to organize information and search

– Do not use too many hashtags in a single post or tweet because this may cause the algorithms to classify your post as a spam

– In the areas of awareness and calls for action, if you are trying to make a trend, focus on a very limited number of hashtags not to distract supporters.

– If your account is private and you use the hashtag, only your followers will have access to it and hence it will not help in creating a trend.