The Secret of Successful YouTube Hashtags

Half the battle of making sure your library’s social media content is reaching the right audience is selecting the right hashtags for each post. In the past we’ve broken down what hashtags are and why they’re important to utilize in social media marketing. This time around, we’re honing in specifically on YouTube. As the world’s second most-visited website (according to Hootsuite), and with the rise of popularity in video content, YouTube has become an important platform for organizations to tackle. Using hashtags on YouTube is similar to other social media platforms, but has added benefits of extending the reach of your videos and categorizing your content by topic or theme. Let’s dive in on how to take advantage of these hashtags.

Finding the Best Hashtags

It’s always best practice to do some research first and see what kind of videos pop up for the hashtags you’re considering, to make sure it’s a relevant tag. Try searching for the main theme of your video and see what hashtags the top-ranked video is using. Also, check in on your competitors to see what hashtags they’re using and the views they have per video. The YouTube search bar also auto populates the top search suggestions, so just by typing in the “#”, it’ll show you what hashtags are the most popular at that time. Don’t have time to do hashtag recon? There are platforms like Ahrefs that will generate hashtags for you based on terms that you give them. Plus, a YouTube Listening feature that can suggest trending topics and associated hashtags.

Adding Hashtags to YouTube Videos

Once you know what hashtags will perform best, you’ll need to add them in before posting. Both the video title and the video description can include hashtags and it’s important to utilize both for maximum reach. If your video is a part of a larger series, tagging this video with the same hashtag first in the title will help let viewers know that this is part of a video series. For example, if you are always posting a short video on the new books that have come into the library, an appropriate title for this video could be “#NewBookFriday – Halloween Edition,” allowing you to change the theme for each new video but keep the hashtag the same. In the video’s description it’s important to include a brief summary of the video, keywords that give a clear picture of the topic, any links to your website or social that are relevant, and additional hashtags. Since the description allows for more text, this is a place where you can add a number of hashtags that might seem out of place in the video title but are still relevant to the content. Check out this example from New York Public Library’s 125^th anniversary. They’ve been posting videos of well-known figures sharing their favorite books. Each video title is “#NYPL125” followed by the name of the public figure. They’re also hashtagging the campaign “#LoveReading.” In addition to utilizing hashtags and keywords, they’ve organized these videos into a playlist to group them together for viewers.

YouTube Hashtag Guidelines

Now that you’ve seen some examples and know how to get started, here’s a few guidelines to keep in mind when hashtagging on your library’s YouTube page. YouTube allows up to 15 hashtags in your video description and has stated that if you use more than 15, they will ignore all hashtags. It’s recommended by experts to use one hashtag in the video title and keep it to 3-5 additional hashtags in the description. Hashtag overload can deter viewers and also make it confusing as to what the message is. It’s also encouraged to create branded hashtags that are unique to your library. By doing so, when a person clicks on that hashtag to see more relevant videos, you won’t have any competition as they’ll just be brought to your content. This would work great with a video series you plan on doing regularly. Adding location-based hashtags can be helpful to increase your local reach. For example, using #NJLibraries could expand your reach statewide.

No matter what hashtags you use, always make sure you’re in compliance with the YouTube Hashtag Policies. Enjoy exploring hashtags and keywords of YouTube and don’t forget to check the analytics to monitor video views and see which hashtags your patrons are most interested in to keep adjusting for your audience.