How To Get More Reach On LinkedIn Using Hashtags

In case you missed it, LinkedIn is becoming a safe haven for on-the-clock time wasting. In fact, that is probably what you are doing right now (caught you!). This is the main reason why the method of creating very direct, vertical specific content for LinkedIn and sponsoring the post to decision makers in that vertical on a CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) or CPV (Cost Per View) basis is yielding incredible results.

While this is all well and good, not every MSP has an advertising budget or has the time to constantly monitor and optimize paid campaigns. For those MSPs, there is still much hope, because the real value on LinkedIn right now is through organic impressions. Users tend to post less on LinkedIn than they do on other social platforms, which is great for organic reach, because there is far less noise for your post to compete with. Another way to boost your organic reach even further is by using hashtags.

How LinkedIn Hashtags Work

For about a year now, LinkedIn is allowing users to follow hashtags. By, following a hashtag, any posts that contain that hashtag now have the ability to show in your feed (although algorithmicly it is not guaranteed). We find that it is most common for LinkedIn users that utilize this feature, do so to follow the hashtags of their own industry. This gives them a steady stream of relevant content to supplement their feed and re-assure themselves that their social media activity is “work-related.”

Targeting MSP Verticals by Hashtags

This newly adopted LinkedIn feature is now creating a ton of opportunities for MSP marketers. Now, regardless of how many followers you or your company page has, you can get organic traffic to your posts simply by using hashtags. This works best when you frame your content around one vertical at a time and the content is written and/or created specifically for that purpose.

Here is an example of an article headline that follows this model:

“Top 3 Questions To Ask Your Healthcare IT Provider.”

Posting this article to LinkedIn and including #healthcare on this post, now has the potential to reach a significant amount of users organically and the relevance of the post may warrant a decent click-thru. If you are fortunate enough for some of these users to like and comment on your post, their connections (whom are most likely other healthcare professionals) are likely to see it, and thus the snowball begins to roll.

MSP Verticals With Most Followers

To make this much easier to digest, we compiled a list of what we believe are the most common MSP verticals and researched how many followers each corresponding LinkedIn hashtag has at this given moment. We compiled this data and then ranked them accordingly. The amount of followers and/or ranking can change any second, so feel free to click through each hashtag to LinkedIn to view the most current figures.

1. #healthcare – 9,133,607 followers
2. #education – 8,961,400 followers
3. #law – 5,476,801 followers
4. #construction – 4,030,681 followers
5. #realestate – 3,921,430 followers
6. #energy – 3,749,478 followers
7. #finance – 606,653 followers
8. #retail – 12,124 followers
9. #accounting – 11,684 followers
10. #manufacturing – 10,217 followers

We suggest creating your first piece of content around your vertical with the most followers and then testing results. As more users begin to adopt the “follow hashtag” feature, this opportunity will continue to grow. It is a good idea to test and optimize this strategy now and capitalize at as these followers trend up.

If you are getting consistent organic LinkedIn impressions in your vertical using hashtags, or if you have questions on how to do so, feel free to respond in the comments below.