You may have heard over and over the benefits of using #hashtags to grow your audience on social media. Every social media guru will swear by the little # symbol. So, you pop in there as many as you can and you just wait to become viral… But wait, are you using the right hashtags to drive the right audience to your content? In order for them to be effective, you must make sure you are using hashtags specifically made for writers.
Why use hashtags?
You may get away with not using hashtags on other social media like Facebook and Pinterest, but for Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, you should really add them into your strategy. Hashtags are how social media organizes content. They are keywords that relate to your niche, type of picture/video, or location. It’s the feature that makes your content become discoverable and allows other users with similar interests to find you.
You can use this to promote your book and even create a unique hashtag that your super fans will use when mentioning your book.
Connect with readers and writers in your genre by searching for people who use the same hashtags as you.
Join an event. If there is a writing event on social media, you can bet they will most likely have a hashtag to promote it. You feel part of the gang when using the hashtag as a writer.
Run contests. #Bookgiveaway is a very popular hashtag and who doesn’t love a free book? But there are so many other contests out there, you just have to find the right hashtags to look for them.
How many should you use?
The rules differ from social media platform to platform. Twitter recommends using two hashtags per post, but you are definitely free to use more.
Instagram confused a lot of people by recommending you to use only 3-5 hashtags per post. They actually stated that adding 10-20 more would not help distribution. A lot of people still contest this and believe it does help the algorithm, so you could just do what works for you. But the argument behind this is that fewer hashtags help Instagram categorize content more accurately.
On TikTok, there is no limit of hashtags but there is a limit for characters so you might get cut in the middle of a word if you try to go for too many.
Here are some of the best hashtags for writers:
#AmWriting
#iLoveWriting
#NaNoWriMo
#WritingMotivation
#WordCount
#WritingCommunity
#WritingDay
#WritingAdvice
#WritersCommunity
#WritersConnection
If you’re afraid repeating the same hashtags over and over will hurt the algorithm or would like some variety. I have compiled a list of over 250 hashtags writers can use on their social media. Don’t forget to download your list!
PATRICIA MORAIS
I write bilingual (PT and EN) supernatural fantasy books inspired by mythology and folklore from around the world. But my actual mission is to help other writers write, publish and market their books.
