Prior to the rise of Twitter, the # symbol led a life of innocence and simplicity. You could find it on coffee mugs and t-shirts letting you know exactly who was number one (usually it was a Dad or a Boss!).
Every now and then, you’d hear the automated voice on the other side of the telephone telling you to “push the pound sign” to continue. It was a very useful little symbol that didn’t receive much consideration.
Boy, how things have changed. This is the Cinderella story of symbols, moving from complete obscurity to celebrity all because of social media. In the social world it isn’t known as the number symbol or pound sign, no sir, this is a hashtag!
Hashtags and Pinterest
For a very long time, Pinterest told us not to use hashtags. They didn’t work as expected, they could be confusing, etc. But now they’re back. See the latest update on hashtags on Pinterest. And Pinterest’s official word.
Now on Pinterest, as in other social sites such as Twitter and Instagram, hashtags serve as a shortcut to performing a search for other pieces of content. Here’s the official word:
Hashtags on Pinterest work just like they do anywhere else. When you add hashtags to the description for a new Pin, other Pinners can visit a feed of all the Pins that share that hashtag.
Hashtags – A Whole New Way to Search Pinterest
Pinners will find hashtagged Pins when they search for a hashtag, OR when they click on a hashtag in a Pin description.
Interestingly, it’s the freshest hashtagged Pins that will appear in the search. From the help files,
When a user searches a hashtag the freshest pins with that hashtag will appear at the top of the feed. When a user searches the same phrase without the hashtag, it will pull up the original search results page.
This suggests that we view hashtags as an entirely new method of search. We have keyword search for evergreen Pins, and now hashtag search for newer Pins. Marketers need to be taking advantage of both!
Where to use Hashtags on Pinterest
We’ve seen hashtags used in Pinterest in the past including board titles, board descriptions, account descriptions and profile names. Alas, hashtags DON’T work in these areas, they are not clickable and they’re not searchable. Keep them to your Pin descriptions.
Hashtags have come a long way and in Twitter and Instagram they have definitely made their mark. Will you be using hashtags in Pinterest?
Promoted Pins are not currently showing up in hashtag search results. So should you use them? Well, Promoted Pins do tend to get saved (repinned) a lot, so in theory THOSE Pins could then show up in hashtag searches. I’m using them!
Which Hashtags Should I Use on Pinterest?
Use relevant hashtags (up to 20). Use a mix of time sensitive (if applicable) and evergreen keywords. Start with something that makes sense to you and when you start typing it in the description within Pinterest, you’ll get suggestions along with the number of Pins with that hashtag. Use those suggestions to build up lists of relevant hashtags you can use when you schedule with Tailwind.
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