If your medical practice is on social media, it’s most likely because you want to interact with more patients and audiences. These platforms make it so much easier to reach more people since anyone can stumble upon your page, especially if they’re looking for self-diagnosis answers.
But there are intentional ways to categorize your account’s content so that it’s associated with the healthcare space. A common tool for doing this is through hashtags.
Hashtags are words and phrases preceded by the hash sign (#). They revolutionized the social media space and grew so popular that they changed the name of the pound sign, think about that.
They identify related content posts. That way, users can search for a particular hashtag in what they’re interested in and find all posts that used that tag. Alternatively, they can click on a hashtag within a post and it will take them to the page of posts.
This helps users find similar content to what they’re viewing. It makes it much easier to expand your audience so more people learn about your practice. People find accounts that post content they’re interested in, leading to more traffic to your page.
So now that you understand what this tool is, what are the best ones to include in healthcare practice’s posts? You’ll definitely want to use them considering that posts that include at least one hashtag averages almost 13% more engagement than those that don’t.
You don’t need to look too hard, because we’ve done the work for you. Here are some of the most popular health hashtags on each platform to get you more traffic.
Table of Contents
Most Popular: #healthy (160 million posts)
Instagram is a visual platform. It’s full of tips for healthy habits such as recipes, diet, and exercise. A lot of influencers on this platform focus on promoting healthy lifestyles, so this is a popular tag.
Your practice will benefit from including this tag in educational posts. Since it’s so active it means that people monitor it for interesting content. Thus, if you use this hashtag often there’s a higher chance that these users will follow your page.
Most experts agree that the best time to post on Instagram is between 11 am-1 pm and 7 pm-9 pm. However, if you’re trying to reach a particular audience through an extremely popular and saturated hashtag then that window may change.
In other words, before you post to a particular area of interest you’ll want to do your research on it. Those were the global Instagram recommended posting times, it could be entirely different for the tags you use.
Other popular Instagram posts use similar tags that relate to #healthy. Some Instagram users include as many as possible within their captions to gain more attention. After all, you can include up to 30 within the caption of your posts.
These also often promote health and wellness tips.
There are even popular tags to engage with other healthcare professionals. Of course, tags such as #doctorlife and #healthcareworkers help users find medical professionals.
But it’s also beneficial for you to connect with peers. This is so important to do as a doctor, especially with the increase in burnout among physicians.
#healthyfood - 81m posts
#healthylifestyle - 68.7m posts
#healthyliving - 30.1m posts
#instahealth - 17.3m posts
#dentist - 7.7m posts
#maternity - 7.5m posts
#medical - 5.8m posts
#healthiswealth - 5.2m posts
#healthcoach - 4.7m posts
#virus - 3.6m posts
#medicalstudent - 1.2m posts
#disease - 722k posts
#doctorlife - 327k posts
#healthyteeth - 306k posts
#healthcareworkers - 294k posts
#medicalhumor - 95.8k posts
TikTok
Most Popular: #fitness (35.1 billion views
TikTok is a video-based platform. Like Instagram, people often share health advice on this channel. Fitness is one of the top health-related hashtags on the platform. People use this hashtag for demonstrations, cataloging their journeys and before-and-afters in order to promote an active lifestyle.
If your practice posts anything fitness-related, use this tag. That way people can not only find your videos when they search for this content, but it’ll also increase the chance that your content will land on their For You Page.
Of course, fitness influencers can also more easily find your account, too. You could partner with these influencers to share credible information since they already receive a lot of attention. This helps users trust you, too, since they already follow their favorite fitness accounts.
Although fitness is an incredibly popular area within TikTok, there are other popular health hashtags.
Since TikTok is AI-powered, the app tailors the content it shows to the user based on what they like. It determines what type of content a user likes based on many engagement factors. In essence, if the app shows a user a health-related video and the user watches it all the way through, likes it, or shares it, the app will send similar content to that user based on its hashtags. This is a game-changer as a small practice who’s just starting to get into the platform. You don’t need to have a big following in order to make engaging content.
This platform is more light-hearted, but can still contain credible information. As a doctor, you can benefit so much with tags such as #doctor, #surgery, or #hospital because they have so many views and people want credible content.
#workout - 161B views
#gym - 20.4B views
#skincare - 13.7B views
#doctor - 8.1B views
#selfcare - 5.6B views
#hospital - 2.7B views
#surgery - 1.8B views
#chiropractor - 1.8B views
#medicine 1.2B views
#nutrition - 985.3M views
#nursing - 757.9M views
#healthyrecipes - 579.4M views
#healthyeating - 154.3M views
Most Popular: #healthcare (9,769,774 followers)
LinkedIn is a business-based platform made for networking and professional communication on the social web. On this platform, users can follow hashtags so that any posts containing them will show up on their feed. This makes it easy for users to find content that relates to their profession.
Given the heavy emphasis on categorizing industries, #Healthcare is one of the most popular health-related hashtags. It has several million post results, so the frequency that people post using this tag is also high.
You’ll notice that the most popular ones on this platform relate to educational, awareness, and business-related topics. These contribute to this platform’s professional conversations, making it easier to network with your peers. Here are some of the runner-ups:
#mindfulness - 1,722,864 followers
#pharmaceuticals - 1,053,257 followers
#mentalhealthawareness - 43,035 followers
#patientexperience - 42,837 followers
#medtech - 34,832 followers
#healthtech - 20,037 followers
#healthsystems - 16,694 followers
#hospitalmanagement - 14,458 followers
#revenuecycle - 11,165 followers
#medicalcoding - 9,997 followers
#medicalbilling - 9,130 followers
#healthit - 7,125 followers
#healtheducation - 5,861 followers
#healthcareinnovation - 5,246 followers
Most Popular: #health (1,112,821 exposure per hour)
Twitter was the first-ever social media platform to introduce hashtags, all the way back in 2007.
The platform is also famous for showing global trending content by displaying the categories that are receiving the most attention. For some popular tag searches, it will even show how many Tweets included it in the last hour.
Although the app has a character limit on every post, it surprisingly allows users to include information in a variety of ways. People can share videos, images, links, polls, or their free-formed thoughts. Unfortunately, people are 70% more likely to Retweet false information. And when false Tweets include trending or popular hashtags, it reaches even more people.
But as a doctor, you can use these popular and trending topics to spread truthful information about one of the most widely searched topics on the internet, health. Sharing what you know adds credible information for when people search for this content and when the hashtags start trending.
#psychology - 614,817 exposure per hour
#mentalhealth - 401,633 exposure per hour
#pharma - 325,583 exposure per hour
#healthissues - 321,308 exposure per hour
#wellness - 205,571 exposure per hour
#healthtech - 171,283 exposure per hour
#biotech - 130,871 exposure per hour
#exercise - 94,662 exposure per hour
#mhealth - 36,342 exposure per hour
Conclusion
Including hashtags with your posts on social media is a simple way to expand your audience beyond those not actively searching for your account.
With a little bit of research, you’ll have a better idea of the type of content people engage with the most. You’ll have an idea of who else is posting and their credibility, that way you can bring your expert opinion to the platform in a unique way.
Furthermore, you can find other popular accounts that often include commonly-used tags in their posts. That gives you the opportunity to network and partner with accounts that people already follow and trust.
Bringing your content to popular pages on these platforms is one thing, incorporating the right mix of tags is what will give you a best odds for others to find you without advertising.
