Recently Facebook introduced a hashtags feature to its platform. Let´s take a minute to learn how to use and leverage them as an effective social marketing tool.

Facebook announced that it recently incorporated hashtags as a way of bringing conversations about public events, people, and topics to the forefront. The world´s largest social network considered the amount of buzz people tend to generate around popular television shows, sport games, and breaking events. "During primetime television alone, there are between 88 and 100 million Americans engaged on Facebook – roughly a Super Bowl-sized audience every single night,” Greg Lindley stated, when announcing the new feature in the official blog post. To date, there has not been a more convenient or organized way to monitor events or discussions on Facebook on a grand scale. But now, the roll out of hashtags should help people participate in public conversations they are interested in. The hashtags will work on personal profile posts, fan page posts, group posts, event posts, and all comments.

Basic Hashtag information:

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• Click on the hashtag to get redirected to its feed. You can also click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram.
• Every hashtag on Facebook has its own unique URL.
• Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar, for example, #NBAFinals or type facebook.com/hashtag/xxx into your browser (replace the x's with the tag you want to look up).
• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.

A few #HashtagTips

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Marketers are already embracing the power of hashtags and coming up with ways they can be used to their highest potential. You can find some great tips and ideas under #hashtagtips including:

• Whether you have the new #hashtag feature or not, start using strategic hashtags in your public Facebook posts (profile and page). Everyone who has the feature will see your hashtags as clickable links.
• Each hashtag on Facebook has its own unique URL with a status update box at the top. Drive traffic to that URL from other sites to spark more conversation.
• Include hashtags even when posting on mobile. Although hashtags don't work on mobile (yet!), they do work on desktop when posted through your mobile device.
• Use #hashtags to start a conversation with a group. Every word you make into a hashtag will be grouped into its own status update box!
• Think about your industry and target market, and the types of hashtags you use on other social networks.
• Use tags in trending topics related to your industry.
• Capitalize the #FirstLetterInEachWord of your hashtag to make it more readable
• Don´t overdo your post with hashtags, 1 – 2 is more than enough

What about hashtag privacy?

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You control who sees your posts, including those with hashtags. Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith summed up all the hashtag related privacy settings as follows:

• As with all personal profile features on Facebook,privacy settings prevail.
• If you publish a post on your profile to friends only, and the post contains a hashtag, the hashtag will be clickable and open up to display all other posts on Facebook containing that hashtag.
• But, ONLY friends can see friends-only posts that show up in hashtag searches.
• Public posts—with or without hashtags—are public.
• Private (friends-only) posts—with or without hashtags—are just that: private and visible to friends only.
• Even when friends include hashtags in comments on your friends-only thread, your post is still private and visible just to your friends.
• With hashtags shared in private groups, that clickable hashtag will open to show public posts with that tag (along with any friends' posts with that tag), but posts from the private group are only available to group members.
• Individual comments on threads do not surface in hashtag searches.

Will hashtags affect the reach of your posts? Will they engage more people and keep them talking? Before we bring you the answers, check out these 8 basic hashtag tips and sign-up for a free 14-day trial with Socialbakers Analytics to see how your social media performance compares to your competition.