Youtube Hashtags - What Are They and How to Use Them

We've been saying this for years, and now it's official: Best YouTube Chrome extension. You want to do exactly the same thing on your channel? Let's do this! Let's kick this video off with a question to you: if you could put any hashtag above the title of your videos on YouTube what would it be? Let us know in the comments below. 

The reason I ask that is because it's been experimented with a by channels on YouTube right now. PewDiePie has been adding tags to his videos, perhaps as a little bit of a laugh. Tim Schmoyer has been adding hashtags at to his family vlog content, and our own senior evangelist Jeremy Vest has been using the hashtag of an upcoming conference for his video content. Hello, my name is Rob, welcome to vidIQ. 

If this is your first time here, we are the Youtube Tool and channel that aims to help you get more views and save time with tips and tricks videos just like the one you're watching now. Today we're talking about this brand new phenomenon from YouTube which literally is hashtags on your video content. These hashtags are a new official tool from YouTube. Previously the blue wording above the title would define a location. 





People even tried to gamae that system by creating fake locations such as at number one on trending so it would trick you into thinking this video was really popular. Nice idea. But these hashtags now are an official source of categorizing your content; here are some of the ground rules. 

First of all, as far as we are aware, there's no restrictions on channel size but this feature is not currently available on iOS. These hashtags are clickable therefore they are searchable on YouTube which brings up a very crucial point now: be first, be fast. There's likely to be a land grab on these hashtags, that's why we're using more views right now on all of our videos, so hopefully we're going to become the masters of that particular hashtag. 

If you have a slogan or you want to use your channel name as a hashtag get on it right now. You have a limit of three hashtags per video. You can include them either in the title or the video description. We found if you include them in the video description then it adds them above your title. If you add the hashtags to your title it doesn't add them to above your title. 

So it stands to reason to have an extra little bit of metadata floating around on your content, to add the hashtags to your description so it sits there just nicely above your title and save the title for really delivering that strong message that gets people to click on your videos. If you do add a location to your video which you can still do on Android but I don't think you can do it on iOS or on desktop anymore that will overwrite any hashtags that you try and add to your video, so just bear that in mind. 


These hashtags have a range of policies that must meet the community guidelines on YouTube much like all metadata on the platform. So things like no spaces, no over usage of hashtags, no harassment, no sexual content. There is a support section on YouTube, I'll leave a link in the description, check it out for the full details on that. So those are the facts behind YouTube hashtags, but what about the opinions? Here's what we think.

 First and foremost this is something new from YouTube which is always exciting for video creators and look at the visual impact it has on the user experience on Android devices, at the moment currently not on iOS. It stands there above the video title and just below the video and it allows people to do one-click searches for particular search hashtag terms, how powerful could that potentially be? Whether video creators use it sensibly, or manipulate it, or abuse it, that remains to be seen. This can be a way to keep viewers watching your content whether you use your channel name as a hashtag, a popular slogan you have, or you have a series of videos, whether it be Fortnite tips, beauty makeup challenge, or the best Trump memes, 



you have that as your hashtag and carry that on in a series of videos, you can add to your session watch time which is always a fantastic thing for your channel health. Another thing to consider is whether you see these hashtags as valuable enough to add to your legacy content. Are you going to go through your entire back catalog of videos, adding hashtags to your descriptions? Fortunately with the vidIQ bulk description campaign manager you can do that relative quickly. There's a link right now here. Another thing to consider is your future videos. You have the default description option in the creator studio. 

Are you going to add a set of three hash tags that you're going to use for all of your future videos, or perhaps customize them depending on the content that you produce? As a new tool of course many things could happen that we're not aware of right now. The most important thing is you now know what they are, we want to know how you intend to use them. As for us... vidIQ for life. We love talking about YouTube tools and secrets old and new. Over here we've got a video all about the community tab, everything you need to know. And down here an interesting little hack we found that affects watch time by playback speed. Enjoy the rest of your video making day and we'll see you on another post.