Facebook Hashtags Aren’t Useful For Viral Reach

A new study shows that Facebook hashtags aren’t useful for viral posts – and in fact, post without hashtags have greater reach than those with hashtags. Facebook recently copied this feature from Twitter in June to add context and shared interests; EdgeRank Checker’s study, though, examined over 500 pages in the past few months, and discovered that hashtags only bring views to brands’ pages incidentally, rather than intentionally. There was a decrease in the amount of engagement per fan in posts with hashtags, and there is no correlation between the amount of fans and the greater positive impact on a brand’s engagement. Moral of the story: Facebook branding doesn’t work well with hashtags.