Outlander Season 5: Understanding the social media hashtags

Outlander Season 5 is back and you’ll want to connect with fellow fans on social media. There are a lot of hashtags to use, but which ones are most important?

We can all rejoice. Droughtlander is officially over for another season. Okay, so in 12 weeks time or so, we’ll have another Droughtlander, but for now, it’s over. You’ll likely want to chat all things Outlander Season 5 with your fellow fans.

Social media can play an important role in the renewal or cancellation of a series. It was Twitter campaigns that helped to save shows like The Expanse and Lucifer, because social media is international unlike the Neilsen live ratings or STARZ App viewership. Social media can help to keep a show on the air, but you need to use the right hashtags at the right time.

And there are so many hashtags, right? Do you use #Outlander? What about #TheFrasers or #TheMacKenzies? And then you’ve got the episode title hashtags, #ClaireandJamie, #RogerandBree, and so oh many more. How do you know what you should be tweeting? What about Instagram and Facebook?

The most important Outlander hashtagh is…

Make sure you use #Outlander. This is the most important of all hashtags. It’s the one that Neilsen tracks every week to give networks a snapshot of what their social media reactions are like.

Neilsen only tracks at specific times, though. You’ll need to use it on the day of new episodes. Start three hours before the episode airs in your timezone and then all the way until three hours after the episode airs. That is a long time period. We’re looking at from 5 p.m. to midnight on Sundays.

It doesn’t matter what you tweet about. Just make sure #Outlander is used as one of the first two hashtaghs on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. (And the posts need to be public).

What about other hashtags?

All the rest don’t count for Neilsen but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t or can’t use them. I find using the episode title as a hashtag is extremely useful when speaking about the specific episode. For the Outlander Season 5 premiere, you’ll want to us #TheFieryCross. You can also use #OutlanderSeason5 or #OutlanderSeason5Premiere.

When on Twitter, stick to just three hashtags at the most. More than that gets spammy. On other sites, you can use more but I like to be conscious of overloading a post with hashtags. That’s just a personal choice.

You may also want to try out other hashtags. Have something to say about Roger and Brianna’s wedding? Try #TheMacKenzies. When you want to chat about Claire and Jamie, #TheFrasers is a good option to use. The idea of the hashtags here is that you collect your posts so that when someone searches via a hashtag, they’ll come across what you have to say. You can also find others talking about the same things by searching the hashtags.

While you want to help the show succeed on social, you also want to have fun. Use #Outlander first and then have fun with all the other hashtags.

Outlander Season 5 premieres on Feb. 16 at 8/7c on STARZ.