How to Use Hashtags on Pinterest

Are you using hashtags on Pinterest? Hashtags are now visible and being used on Pinterest.  This video tutorial will give you the top tips for using hashtags on Pinterest to get your pins discovered and drive traffic to your site.

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Hashtags on Pinterest

If you been following me on my blog, in August 2017, I had the opportunity to tour Pinterest headquarters in San Francisco, California. It was an absolute dream (get the full post here) and while I was there, I receive a lot of great Pinterest marketing strategies, but specifically, I was told that Pinterest would start using hashtags in the pin descriptions.

Update: In October, the best practices guide from Pinterest is recommending 2 hashtags per pin description. You can read about that here.)

For a long time, Pinterest wasn’t utilizing hashtags, but they recently just officially announced (September 2017) hashtag usage on their blog. Here’s what Pinterest has to say:

When inserting a hashtag, we recommend you be specific and descriptive. Use words or phrases that describe the content in the Pin – we recommend you add no more than 20 hashtags per Pin. It’s best to be objective and use hashtags that make sense and are relevant to the Pin. Depending on your Pin, consider using hashtags that are timely (e.g. #oscars, #backtoschool, #halloween) and/or hashtags for evergreen content that works well on Pinterest (e.g. #mealplanning, #hairgoals, #homedecor). This is to help make it easier to for users to filter and find relevant content they are interested in.

Hashtags are a new way to reach users interested in your content. 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.

It’s rare that Pinterest tell us exactly what to do- so when they do, we’ll take it.  I think the big takeaway points from this post are:

• Be specific and descriptive
• Use no more than 20 (and I recommend using a lot less!)
• Consider timely (as in seasonal) and evergreen hashtags
• Freshest pins will appear at the top of the feed, versus pins with the most pins.

The last point interests me most.  I love that those who post the most fresh pin will appear at the top. This is a great way for those with a small following to get pin exposure.  And, hashtag usage on Pinterest isn’t widely used yet, so be one of the first in your niche to use it!

How to add a Hashtag on Pinterest

You can add your hashtags in a few places. I have been adding mine to the alt tags after my keyword rich pin description so that when others pin my pin, the hashtags automatically populate in the pin description.  You can also add the hashtags when pinning the pin to your boards (to then later schedule with Tailwind. What’s Tailwind? Get the full details here). The most important takeaway is don’t get rid of your keyword rich description- add the hashtags after the pin description. The keyword data is still very important to your strategy (here’s a full post on keywording)! Here’s what it looks like on the screen:

Now, obviously this is only available on desktop, so be sure to add pins there versus mobile.  Here’s a screenshot searching with the hashtag #pinteresttips.  See if you can find my posts. 🙂

Listen to my video for more ways to use hashtags on Pinterest:

How will you use hashtags? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Are you new to Pinterest and want more tips to get started? See my introductory post Getting Started on Pinterest and don’t forget to sign up for my email newsletter here. You’ll receive my FREE Pinterest Start-up Guide for your creative small business where I give easy actionable steps to getting started on Pinterest!

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