The newest Pinterest update has everyone asking “how do hashtags WORK on Pinterest?!” I’m here to help you, so you don’t pull your hair out trying to find the answer!

Did you know, that at the beginning of Pinterest (way back in 2010), you could use hashtags on the platform? After a while, the consensus was that it was a waste of your description characters, that they don’t work and they were confusing for people. Well, they’re back baby!

To find out how to Write Perfect Descriptions for your pins;

How do Hashtags Work?

The change happened back in August 2017, what took me so long to get around to writing about them? Testing my friends! Testing! I didn’t want to be the first to tell you about something that I read on somebody else’s blog. What I wanted to do, was tell you what I learned from testing how the hashtags worked on the new platform.

To do all of that testing, I needed a little time.

What Changed Pinterest’s Mind?

According to Pinterest, brands wanted to start utilising them to help disclose ads, for brand recognition and the fact that it’s part of Marketing language now. People even say ‘hashtag’ out loud for cripes sake! It’s in the vernacular and people were using them anyway. Even if they didn’t work.

So now begs the question, how do we develop a good hashtag strategy for Pinterest? And

How Do Hashtags Work On Pinterest?

Well, as with the description, we need to understand how people search Pinterest.

According to Pinterest,

“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.”

The key here is that hashtag searches are going to be chronological.

Pinterest has also said:

“When inserting a hashtag, we recommend you be specific and descriptive. Use words or phrases that describe the content of the Pin – we suggest 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 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.

“No more than 20 hashtags”! That’s a lot! Don’t use them all. When I look at a pin if I see keyword stuffing or a description full of hashtags I do not want to repin or click through. That could just be me, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a good strategy. Especially when there’s a character limit in your description box.

Pinterest wants to use hashtags to provide the freshest content to users.

What does that mean?

It means that you don’t have to go in and update your old pins, but you SHOULD go in and update all of your alt tags on your website to include alt tags. That means that any new pins from your site will have the relevant hashtags attached.

Make it a post per day and see how that works for you? It shouldn’t be too much to add to your daily to-do list. Hopefully!

Want To Learn How To Write Perfect Descriptions For Pinterest?

Finally

The post How Do Hashtags Work On Pinterest? appeared first on Start A Craft Blog.