The Power of a Good #Hashtag 08/31/16 | Tristen Coffee Most of us know what it's like to scroll through Instagram and read through all the clever hashtags. Maybe one hashtag leads us to find a new account to follow. Or another has us laughing because of its' hilarious and clever use. In stating the obvious – hashtags are quite the phenomenon. But what’s so important about the pound sign followed by a keyword? And how do we use hashtags in a valuable way? To understand the power of a good hashtag we need to talk about how they began. Twitter is the mastermind for the creating these guys. In 2007, users discovered they could use the # sign in front of words to create groups. Twitter caught on to the ingenious discovery of their users and began hyperlinking all hashtags in tweets. Now in 2016, every social media platform besides Linkedin (ironically, being not so "linked in") has hashtags. Hashtags allow users to several marketing messages on multiple social media platforms. How? When a user clicks on a hashtag, they are automatically led to a page that shows all public posts with the same hashtag. Which, for the marketer, exposes content to a wider audience by grouping categories together for others to search more effectively. Simply, in marketing, the use of a good hashtag is incredibly valuable in 4 ways: You can reach a new segment of users It boosts your SEO You can monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of your hashtags in Facebook insights and see how it is benefiting your business. It jumps social platforms, which effectively promote and amplify your brand. So way to go Twitter, you have blessed us all. Developed in 2007, the hashtag has become a necessity in marketing today. Hashtags are valuable and effective in reaching your audience, promoting your business, and amplifying your brand. Truly, the power of a good hashtag is the jackpot of social media marketing.