How To Strategically Use Hashtags on Pinterest

Have you started using Hashtags on Pinterest?

It's awesome feature that Pinterest has released and it helps Pinterest users find content. The goal of hashtags on Pinterest is so you’ll have a better chance of having your pins show up in a search feed which gives you a broader audience. 

When using hashtags on Pinterest remember that unlike Instagram hashtags, Pinterest hashtags are used to help users SEARCH TERMS to find content. If you're a wedding photographer then using #weddingphotography would work well for you but using #photography might not be specific enough. Also, Pinterest hashtags are topic specific. You wouldn’t use slang phrases to search on Pinterest. 

How Do You Choose Which Hashtags to Use on Pinterest?

1. Find 1-2 broad hashtags

2. Find 1-2 niched hashtags

3. And if you are looking for work from local businesess, don't forget LOCAL hashtags.

The mix of broad hashtags (related to the topic or general category) and niched hashtags (focused to specific content) will help tell Pinterest and pinners looking for content what your content is about and that it should be distributed into the feed after someone searches for it. Also, although you can use up to 20 hashtags on Pinterest, I suggest using only 3-5 because hashtags can eat up your allowed number of characters in your description. 

How do Pinterest Hashtags Work?

Hashtags are used to search for the freshest pins. This means the most freshest (recent) content uploaded to Pinterest will be shown in the search feed first and move down as more content is added so you want to be very strategic with your hashtags, and your description by using keyword rich sentences and phrases. Your description and your hashtags should complement each other.

You can search for a hashtag two ways: by clicking on a hashtag in a pin description or typing it in the search bar. 

At the moment, you can only use hashtags in your pin descriptions. Hashtags are really helpful in evergreen content (#homedecor) and time specific content (#backtoschool). You can also “brand” your pins with a hashtag. For example, whenever I pin, I use the hashtag #skyrocketvirtualsolutions.  

Where Should You Put Your Pinterest Hashtag? 

Place your hashtags are the end of your pin description. You want pinners to read your description “first” before getting to your hashtags because, again, the goal is to get the pinner to click through and read YOUR content, not see a hashtag and click. If you put it at the beginning of the description, there’s a chance the pinner will click on the hashtag, get lost searching and never come back to your pin. 

I hope these tips helped!

Xoxo

Raquell