As of June 6th 2013, Facebook officially became a hashtag friendly website. Facebook will now allow users to post and search by “#keyword.” The good thing about this, is that Facebook is also making hashtags searchable, even if they’re on different social media platforms like Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

If you’re new to the social media and inbound marketing game and wondering how it can work with your business, I’ll provide you a few tips to help you get started with this hashtag function.

Creating a hashtag – A ‘hashtag’ can be created by simply putting a # in front of a word, or acronym with no spaces. For example “#keyword,” or “#keyphrase.” The good thing, is that Facebook and the other social media websites all follow the uniform standard when it comes to creating hashtags.

If you’re looking to use hashtags for your business, keep the same ideals when you’re looking for keywords as well. Don’t use anything ridiculous like #cheapshoesnobodyremembers. Nobody will remember or type in a hashtag that long, so refrain from using it. Keep it simple, stupid!

Click on hashtags – By clicking on the hashtag that you posted, or clicking on another one that is relevant to you or your business, you’re then able to find everyone else posting about things like you. Doing this not only gives you more ideas to write about, but also gives you the ability to become the authority on a keyword if it aligns with your business correctly.

Personally, I’ll say to never pass up on being able to answer a question if you know it. You never know what could happen with that post and it could potentially be shared or seen by more than one person.

Check for hashtag trends – Finding trends, or being able to see trends to hashtags can help you create content and continue on with communication. Sure, hashtags don’t always translate to your business. If they do match though, you already know it’s being talked about, so you might as well hop on board and see how much traction you can create with content created for that hashtag. To learn more about what tags are trending, visit Hashtags.org.

Hashtags and the use of them are meant to be simple. Social Media is mostly unexplored with small business owners, or even used incorrectly. The use of hashtags and social media can benefit your business and help you expand out further than you imagined.