We Tested the Idea That More Hashtags Is Better
Every time we posted card news, we attached 30 hashtags out of habit. Nobody remembered who set that rule. So we ran a small experiment.
Experiment Design
• Publish 12 card news posts in the same format over two weeks
• Odd-numbered posts get 30 hashtags, even-numbered posts get 7
• Keep topic, posting time, and cover style as similar as possible
• A bot compiles the numbers into a table every morning
The 7-tag set was built like this.
3 topic tags + 2 target-reader tags + 1 series tag + 1 brand tag
Results
• 30-tag group: non-followers made up 31% of reach on average
• 7-tag group: the same metric averaged 42%
• Saves: nearly identical between the two groups
With only 12 posts, this is not a conclusion yet. Still, it was clear that cutting tags sharply cost us nothing.
What We Learned
1. Fit with the topic matters more than the number of tags.
2. Even a single series tag leads some people to look for the next episode.
3. Leave experiment logging to a bot, not a person. People forget the spreadsheet by day three.
The older a habit is, the more it deserves a second look. Many rules turn out to have no real basis.
Next up is testing the length of the first line of the caption. We will write it down when the results are in.