It goes without saying that now more than ever during the pandemic that  LinkedIn will be a crucial place to network, support and build personal and business brand visibility.  

So its important to know how to use  LinkedIn hashtags for COVID19 and related workplace content. LinkedIn will and has seen a huge increase of circa 50-60% content and engagement over the last month and will continue.

Sharing and engaging in valuable and meaningful content is going to be the fuel and support to keep many sustained and encouraged.   

And the sheer volume of content and engagement on LinkedIn will simply explode as more people have time and indeed purpose to find and seek.

And there is already a huge amount of content aligned to the Coronavirus crises and related topics to help us get through the shocks and changes.

Using and following strong and aligned Hashtags on LinkedIn will be more important than ever.   There has been several new hashtags with big Follower & Post metrics arisen from the crises. And many existing hashtags with alignment to the issues are increased in followers and content rapidly.

Why hashtags matter

Hashtags have been important since 2017 when LinkedIn re-introduced them and then mobilised to desktop as well as mobile mid 2018.  They are more critical than ever now to amplify  distribution and visibility of content.  

Hashtags assist to find and search for topic and subjects.  Members choose to follow what and which is important and meaningful to them and the functionality now is excellent to do so.  

And content curators use them on their content to maximise visibility to all levels of 1st, 2^nd and 3^rd degree (i.e. not just 1^st connections).

Hashtags have become an important part of LinkedIn marketing and search functionalities.  And it certainly will increase traffic to your LinkedIn Profile

Top COVID related hashtags – Updated 30 July 2020

I have kept track and analysed the main hashtags since March 2020 that are being used around and for COVID19 topics and related issues, the latest update below. 

What has been interesting is to see how there is often a large disconnect between the Followers of a hashtag and the number of posts/articles which have used that Hashtag.  

The number of posts with a hashtag without good Follower numbers will not be effective.

General Hashtag Tips

These tips are relevant for ALL your LinkedIn posts and articles.  The principles do not change irrelevant of the topic.  But as social media content and usage is  increasing circa 50% with the COVID19  its really important to ensure you get seen. 

Here are my top tips.

1. Do not hashtag stuff your content the maximum number for best results keep to is 3 (or 4 max) hashtags per post/article. This applies to all content on LinkedIn,  irrelevant of COVID19  and related topics.

Using 10, 20, and 30 (I’ve even seen 60) just makes people look desperate and/or unfocussed on their topic and value. Your personal brand matters so less hashtags is definitely more.

2. For COVID related  posts I recommend using 1 or 2 of the main hashtags (see below chart) and add another 1 or 2 for the more aligned topic, objective and audience of the content.

3. Recommend you do not generally use  hashtags in the body of posts as it is not user friendly nor appealing to the eye to read. Keep them to the bottom generally unless the post needs quick subject matter identification. Then still keep to the circa 4 hashtags per post. 

If you need to identify quickly in the first paragraph or 2 what your topic is (make sure it is a top used hashtag) then fine. 

But do NOT use more than the 4 (or ok 5 at most if critical) in  the entire post/article.   Remember, hashtags are not hyperlinks. 

Your headline, image and layout of the post including  emoji’s for eye direction and focus And do not use bold or fancy fonts,  they do not always work on all devices and its just.. well too risky to stuff up.

4. Check the Followers of a hashtag before you use them in your content. LinkedIn now automatically suggest hashtags that will align to your content, which has is also part AI intuitive and topic related.  But always check what has better metrics. Don’t assume a hashtag is a valued one, research.

5. Don’t create your own obscure topic hashtags in the hope of more visibility. It doesn’t work.

Extra tip: Hashtags in Comments 

 I’m not a huge fan of adding hashtags into your comments on other peoples posts.  But it may be valuable to do so if your comment has detailed commentary and value add. 

It then would be worth indexing it.  I recommend only one (1) hashtag though.

Using the right LinkedIn hashtags with purpose and strategy will  assist your reach and footprint during  the current crises COVID19.

Update March 2022

In April 2020 I published what was at the time, the worlds largest collation of 400 LinkedIn hashtags.. 

I collated  this manually to verify the metrics for each hashtag.  

My research was published in April 2020 across a range of business media  to support using LinkedIn  including

Flying Solo   

Ticker TV News 

Inside Small Business  

Flying Solo -Toolkit Covid Hashtags

 

Later in 2020, LinkedIn removed the metrics of  posts using the hashtag.   I did extensive calculations on what I termed the ROFP – Ratio of Followers & Posts.  This was a pity as it was very valuable information in the decision making of which top hashtag had greater weight.    Here is what that ROFP analysis looked like in the search field when manually calculating at the time:

 

In January 2022 I expanded the research to publish the Top 600 LinkedIn Hashtags  

Here is the complete Top 600 Hashtags – scroll through all pages directly:

Top 600 LinkedIn Hashtags 2022 eBook

 

 

 

 

 

Read all my media articles & interviews about LinkedIn HERE