Today I want to really quickly talk about how you should be using hashtags on Facebook. Hashtags on Facebook don't work in exactly the same way as what they do on other the platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. Whilst on Instagram or Twitter you might put many hashtags within a post, perhaps you might put 8 to 10 hashtags within a post, on Facebook you’d be expected to place just 1 to 2 hashtags per post.

With that in mind let’s take a look at a study by Social Bakers, which examined how Facebook engagement correlates hashtag use.

(Takeaway: too many hashtags lowers engagement - and won't help you to get more likes.)

• Posts with 1 or 2 hashtags averaged 593 interactions

• Posts with 3 to 5 hashtags averaged 416 interactions

• Posts with 6 to 10 hashtags averaged 307 interactions

• Posts with more than 10 hashtags averaged 188 interactions

With that in mind, it’s much better to use one well-placed tag versus spamming your followers with a flurry of them. You’ll rarely see more than one or two hashtags used by big brands, if you do they’re usually nestled within the post rather than hanging on their own at the end of it.

Facebook often offer valuable advice to marketers and business owners to help them get the most out of Facebook for their businesses. However, they haven't actually updated their own guidelines how to use hashtags on Facebook since 2016. This is meant that marketers have been left to pick up the slack and try to figure out the best practices for themselves. It's also worth noting here that there is very little evidence to support whether hashtags on Facebook significantly increase or decrease engagement.

You've probably heard this 10,000 times before but when you're creating posts on Facebook you should be aiming to keep the text between 40 and 80 characters. While Facebook's actual character limit is significantly higher than this, this is what is been proven to be most effective for encouraging engagement.

If you take a look at the big brands and big players within your industry you’ll probably notice that some big brands are big on using hashtags on Facebook and will put them in most of the posts they create, however other brands will totally ignore them and not use them at all.

Just as you can on Instagram or Twitter you can search Facebook for certain hashtags. For example, if you're interested in the World Cup you might want to search #WorldCup to find relevant posts and pages related to your interest.

To summarise, if you're looking to experiment with hashtags on Facebook it pays to understand the platforms best practices. Do research on the top hashtags within your industry and try and incorporate 1 to 2 with these within each of your Facebook posts. Don't spam your posts like you may do on twitter or Instagram with several hashtags. Keep it minimal. Keep it creative. The engagement will flow.