How Many Hashtags Should You Use In LinkedIn Post?
Hashtags are the integral parts of social media interaction.
That’s how people find out about your content.
At the same time, many of us are afraid of hashtag spammers – a post with a million hashtag symbols.
Today, we will discover the ideal balance of too little vs too many hashtags based on the analysis of LinkedIn post data.
Data Analysis
For the datasets, 140,975 LinkedIn posts had been collected in the timeline of November and March 2021. A number of unique users are: 104,913. The dataset is not dominated by a few majority.
Hashtag Counts
On average, people use 8.6 hashtags in their post. The data is a little skewed at the high end with the maximum count of 153, where the medium count is 6.
For the top 1% by the engagement count, the maximum count is 99 with the medium hashtag count equally at 6.
That came surprising to me. It appears there’s no such thing as hashtag spamming as long as you provide value in your content.
The bottom line is don’t be shy to put as many hashtags as you want. The minimum suggested would be 6 hashtags.
Hashtag Placement
Now that we figured out the ideal number of hashtags to put, our next question is where best to place hashtags on.
On average, the most hashtag is placed at the bottom of the post. About 25% of the time, the hashtags start in the middle of the paragraph. You must have seen this #format in the #LinkedIn or any #socialmedia.
In the top 1% popular posts, that ratio is slightly less of 20%.
It is safe to assume including hashtags in the main content of your post does not add much additional value.
Be Methodological
Expanding your reach is always hard. You will definitely need to put thought into your content (see Inksprout extension for the content assistant), while providing values to the readers.
Hashtags in the meanwhile gives you free lunch. You can include as many hashtags as you can to appear in people’s search, while users are free to skim out the hashtags. There’s no reason not to use them.