#Hashtag Content Strategy (For TikTok and everywhere else)
It's still amazing to think about how hashtags have changed our world. For ordinary people, they can be expressive and add nuance to what you're reading or watching. For creators and marketers they're almost required for discovery, organization, analytics, and reporting.
Using hashtags is an evolving and ever-changing recipe that I've added to as I use new platforms. I also ask everyone how they use them, what they've found to be successful, and how I see users interact with specific content under certain tags.
This observe -> try -> revise way of creative problem solving can pretty much be applied to anything. It's what I do, at least.
Platform Guidelines: Listen to them, then break the rules.
Every social media app, forum, website, or platform will handle tags differently. It's their prerogative to keep precisely how they do that private and in their best interest to change it constantly.
Occasionally some of the more time-tested legacy apps will experiment less often, subtly, and even tell us what to do. For instance, Meta recently dropped some best practices for hashtags on Instagram. The sweet spot is between 3 to 5 tags, and they should be very descriptive of your content. There are indications that correctly (and contextually) using the same tags on your account regularly will build authority.
TikTok Hashtag Discovery Strategy
These guidelines are something I've developed by observing great content that I enjoy and that others engage with, speaking with other creators on the platform, and asking other marketers that work in specific niche verticles on TikTok. Ben & Karsyn have a lot of great insights, particularly with new changes on the platform— so definitely check out what they’re saying for up to date information as you build out your own plan.
The big caveat here is that the platform is still relatively new, is still rapidly growing, and the behavior shifts between age demographics fluctuate. TikTok is still figuring out how users will interact and create, and how discovery works will likely be upended in six to twelve months, and only the high-level approaches here will be transferable.
The general methodology of Google's EAT is a content goal worthy of stealing and applying everywhere. That's to ensure your content has Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. So for TikTok I transcribe that a bit, bending the E to stand for entertaining and T to being transparent.
Any hashtags you use should genuinely relate to the content and its intended audience. Generally, any black-hat sort of stuffing gets phased out of practice and will be detrimental long-term on any platform. Anecdotally, when I ask other creators and marketers their own experiences A/B testing any "fyp" tags, there tends to be little to no perceived impact on discovery or engagement.
4 Step TikTok Hashtag Strategy
Be as specific as possible.
Find 3-5 lower visibility hashtags.
Use 3-5 relevant high-visibility hashtags as well.
Be consistent with your account's tags, and use as many relevant tags as possible.
For lower visibility tags, 50 million views or less is good, 5 million views or less is better, and 1 million views or less is best. Finding super specific niche tags that directly relate to your video content is ideal. Users who follow or are fed those lower visibility niche tags are more likely to be most excited or primed if your video makes sense for the tag. If the tag is a third party brand like a video game, there are occasionally misspellings, abbreviations, or alternate tags ending in an additional character or emoji. Be sure to utilize those as you see fit.
Like the strategy above states, a mix of 3-5 of the lower visibility tags along with a couple high visibility tags works well. Until there’s indication of any discovery changes regarding hashtag use on TikTok, I’d suggest using as many tags as possible within the allotted character limit— as long as they make sense with your video.
As an example, here’s a list of tags for a horror video game content creator who primarily posts clips from her twitch stream onto TikTok. The tags and visibility are outdated from the time of that report, but it should give you an idea on how to research and format your own. Creator discretion is a big factor.
High Visibility TikTok Hashtags
#gamer (126.9 Billion)
#gaming (263.1 Billion)
#TikTokGamers (258.1 Million)
#PCgaming (12.4 Billion)
#streamer (45.3 Billion)
#twitchstreamer (16.7 Billion)
#gamergirl (35.2 Billion)
#twitch (102.9 Billion)
Low Visibility TikTok Hashtags
For context, these low-visibility tags are as specific as possible in relation of the individual posts. In this case, they’re related to the game referenced in the video(s).
#deadbydaylight (4.1 Million)
#deadbydaylightedits (53.1 Million)
#deadbydaylightedit (37.4 Million)
#deadbydaylighttiktok (7.9 Million)
#deadbydaylighttoc (3.1 Million)
#deadbydaylight💀 (78.8 Thousand)
Remember these are guidelines. Nothing changes or grows without experimentation, failure, and breaking the rules. I’ve found this approach to be a very solid foundation and starting point for discovery. From what I’ve observed so far, after certain thresholds creators pass in terms of following, using these types of discovery strategies falls back a bit.
That might be because those creators are no longer interested in discovery, the volume of posts and their discretion has them not take the time to include multiple tags, the internal platform discovery algorithm does a better job of discovery so those users stop using hashtag strategies for discovery, at large(er) scale creators find that external distribution methods do more for discovery than hashtag strategies, or any combination of these plausible suggestions.
