Which is the better hashtag to use on LinkedIn:

• #breach or #databreach
• #privacy or #gdpr?

Before you read on, take a moment to think of your answer.

Surprisingly #databreach has 17 times more followers than #breach and #privacy has 15 times more followers than #gdpr.

We’ll dig into the top Privacy and Security hashtags on LinkedIn, why and how you’d use them, highlight some surprising stats, and give some top tips.

Top 10 Privacy & Security Hashtags

Here are our Top 10 hashtags on LinkedIn related to Privacy and Security, by number of followers. It’s our Top 10 – we didn’t boil the ocean, we looked at the hashtags we’ve been using and seeing others use.

Some of this really shocked us:

Have a look to see how the hashtags you’ve been following and using rate in the table and how those numbers compare to what you expected.

Privacy is strong!

We’re delighted to see that #privacy is twice as strong as #security and equally as strong as #cybersecurity. Security has been a recognised domain at organisations around the world for decades now. Privacy struggled to gain respect until GDPR brought in huge maximum fines, together with the increased scale and frequency of data breaches.

These follower numbers suggest Privacy is rapidly catching up with Security as a standalone domain in organisations and as a core part of risk management as a whole.

CyberSecurity has overrun Security

Technically, CyberSecurity is a part of Security. When you do your ISO 27001 project you do look at CyberSecurity of course – everything is digital – but you also look at physical Security, visitors, clear desk practices etc. These follower numbers seem to confirm that the situation may have flipped, and CyberSecurity has grown to be shorthand for all Security.

What’s a ‘good’ number?

Within the overall context of LinkedIn, some of these numbers aren’t bad at all.

• According to Hootsuite, the top 20 hashtags on LinkedIn range from 60 million followers (#india) down to 18 million (#economics). That’s quite a drop off.
• And while #compliance has a respectable 79,336 followers, #digitalmarketing boasts a staggering 27,225,875 followers.

In that context, 500,000 followers for #Privacy seems like a decent number.

Let’s dig in and see which hashtags you should be using and following in the Privacy and Security arenas.

LinkedIn and Hashtags

For background reading, we recommend these resources on LinkedIn and hashtags:

• Here’s LinkedIn themselves on why to use them and best practices (instant PDF download).
• Here’s Hootsuite on using LinkedIn hashtags.
• And here’s a popular article on LinkedIn hashtags.

Here’s our quick take.

There are 2 types of people

In fact, the world is split into 10 types of people – those who understand binary and those who don’t… (we love that joke)

We think it’s useful to look at the dual purposes in using LinkedIn and hashtags.

LinkedIn started as a networking platform and rapidly became a great news source, with Privacy and Security professionals around the world racing to be the first to break with CJEU decisions, regulator enforcement, new standards or guidelines etc.

And you can choose between broad hashtags, with a wider appeal and seen by a wider audience, and narrow hashtags, which are more niche and as a result seen by a more limited audience. That choice might be driven by whether you’re following hashtags, to see what others are saying in your areas of interest, or using hashtags in your posts, so they get seen by your intended audience.

With that context, let’s look at which to use when.

What’s the ‘right’ hashtag?

To answer that, let’s look again at the Top 10 hashtags in the fields of Privacy and Security:

You might be thinking, Should I only use the most popular hashtags, or should I focus on the most specific ones?

The answer is a bit of both.

First, check the power of the hashtag itself: if you’re wanting to generally follow or post about Privacy then it’s clearly better to use and follow #privacy than #gdpr. And if you’re interested in breach, following and using #databreach is much better than #breach (which really surprised us).

Then consider your purpose: there’ll be times when either a broad or narrow hashtag is more relevant. For example, you just want to signal that your post is about Privacy in general. And there’ll be times when a combination is very powerful. For example, using #privacy and #dpo will signpost that your post nests within Privacy about DPOs, so you should reach a more targeted audience within the Privacy community while also benefiting from the broader audience.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of a hashtag depends on its relevance to your audience, the quality of your content, and the engagement strategies you use. But it’s good to keep in mind that even a hashtag with a smaller following can still be useful if it’s specific and targeted to your niche.

Poor performers

When we put this together, we were really surprised at how few followers some of our favourite hashtags have:

In particular:

• why does the longer #databreach have 17 times more followers than #breach?
• why does #cybersecurity have more than double #security when Cyber is part of the overall Security field?
• and why does the longer #cybersecurity have 10 times the followers of the shorter #cyber?

Top Tips

We’ve 2 Top Tips for you when you’re using hashtags on LinkedIn. First, make sure you know how popular each hashtag you like to use really is, don’t go on intuition. You may be surprised:

And second, always think about combining broad and narrow hashtags so you target your post on the key audience while situating it within your broad audience, for example:

Key takeaways

Overall, this research emphasises the importance of:

1. understanding why you’re doing a particular activity on LinkedIn,
2. your target audience, and
3. the popularity of the specific hashtags relevant to your area.

There are some obvious choices for reaching a wider audience, some more niche and specific hashtags that should target more engaged and interested followers, and powerful reasons to consider appropriate combinations.

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