Now that Facebook has FINALLY jumped on the hashtag wagon, you can consider that – for all intents and purposes – hashtags are now a fully-integrated social media marketing tool.

Hashtags On Facebook

There are 4 main things you need to know about hashtags on Facebook.

• Hashtags are searchable
• Hashtags are clickable
• Hashtags follow your personal profile privacy settings
• Hashtags do not (currently) “work” in Facebook Fan Page “About” sections (meaning, if we modified our About to include “#socialmedia”, that hashtag does not become a clickable link)

Hashtags have both legitimate as well as goofy uses. Friend, E|R Social Media Specialist and Floridian, Amanda Austin, and I often joke about the crazy news stories the come out of Florida. Amanda used the hashtag #OnlyInFlorida in a comment to a Facebook update I posted about a gator attempting to enter a home.

Facebook hashtags are shown in blue. When clicked, the #OnlyInFlorida hashtag pulled up a series of other Facebook updates that contained the same hashtag (and even more crazy Florida stories!).

How Integrated Social Media Hashtags can Benefit your Business

Since the use of hashtags has been around for years, marketers and business owners already may be using them on other social media platforms. Hashtags now carry over onto Facebook when an update is posted to Facebook from another platform (e.g. Twitter to Facebook or Instagram to Facebook). Also, if you are using a hashtag for an event, campaign or special offer, you can now integrate into your Facebook content strategy and track its use on the largest social media platform out there.

Have you begun using Facebook hashtags?