#tourism
Using hashtags to promote your travel business is an excellent way to reach potential travellers, but you should know how hashtags work across different platforms.
Tourism businesses often ask us how to use hashtags on Instagram and other social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. The answer is not as straightforward as one might think.
Hashtags were first proposed for use on Twitter in 2007. Since then, they have become an essential part of social media.
Hashtags, especially on Instagram, are essential to your social media strategy as they help attract new customers and amplify your reach.
However, not all tags are equal and how you use them differs from platform to platform.
Quick tips
Firstly let’s delve into some quick hashtag tips:
- Don’t leave any blank spaces within your hashtag. Otherwise, it won’t work (e.g. # perth will not work, it should be #perth).
- Do your research! Search for the tags you want to use on the platform and see who else is using them and if they’re relevant to your business (e.g. will your potential customers be searching for them).
For more tips, check out our Hashtag Etiquette post.
Hashtags on Instagram
If you are not using tags on Instagram yet, you need to start ASAP. People search using tags, and you can also choose to follow certain ones, so you see more of the content you love in your feed.
Our top tips for using hashtags on Instagram:
- You can add up to 30 per post, so why not use all those opportunities?
- Use your insights and analytics to see which posts gain you the most reach.
- Test different tags to see what works best for your brand.
- Don’t just copy and paste the same tags every time.
- Consider a targeted approach when using tags. Instead of #airport, use #perthairport
- Believe it or not, there is a list of banned tags for Instagram. Again, do your research and try to avoid using these tags.
Learn more about using hashtags on Instagram, and check out our post on the best Western Australian travel tags.
Hashtags on TikTok
We can’t talk about hashtags and social media platforms without mentioning the digital juggernaut that is TikTok.
Like other social media platforms, using hashtags on TikTok is great for reach, discoverability, branded content, and jumping on trends. Tags are searchable on TikTok and are often used to find trending content.
While there is no limit to the number of tags you can use on TikTok, captions are limited to just 100 characters. Too many hashtags look spammy and desperate in captions, so TikTok’s character limit is probably a good thing. Keep your captions short and sweet, and focus on a few tags per post.
If you want to include more tags, you can always do so in the comments; however, on TikTok, the comments are far less effective than the caption.
Hashtags on Facebook
We don’t typically recommend using hashtags on Facebook unless it’s part of a campaign such as #coralcoasthighway.
We don’t advise using tags on Facebook because people don’t tend to search by tags on this platform. Not to mention, many tags on a Facebook post look rather messy as you can’t attempt to hide them like you can on Instagram.
Hashtags on Twitter
Twitter is where hashtags were born; however, there’s no room to be extensive, like on Instagram with 30 tags. You are only allowed a maximum of 280 characters per tweet, which means limited space.
Therefore we recommend only using 1-3 tags per tweet. Typically tags will also be a bit broader than on Instagram, so using your region, state or campaign tags is best. Such as #justanotherdayinwa or #westernaustralia.
What you can also do to save space is make the tags part of your tweet rather than just tacking them on the end.
