Why Tagging Accounts Grows Your Reach

Tagging another account in a social media post creates a clickable link to that account's page, which notifies the account and makes your post visible to their audience. Tagging is one of the most effective ways to expand your reach without any additional ad spend. Use it to give credit to a client, shout out a supplier, or collaborate with a partner, each tag is an opportunity for your post to be seen by a new audience.

What This Article Covers

This article covers how to tag accounts when publishing social media posts from your social media publishing tool. For a full walkthrough of creating a social media post, see How to Create and Publish a Social Media Post.

How to Tag an Account in a Social Media Post

Follow these steps to tag an account while creating a social media post.

Step 1: Open your social media publishing tool and begin creating a new post.

The post creation panel displays your connected social media platforms, your caption field, and media upload options.

Step 2: In the post creation panel, locate the Platform-Specific Captions toggle and enable it. Enabling Platform-Specific Captions allows you to write a separate caption for each connected platform, which is required for tagging to work correctly on each network.

The Platform-Specific Captions toggle appears near the top of the caption section in the post creation panel. When enabled, a separate caption field appears for each connected social media platform.

Step 3: In the caption field for your chosen platform, type @ followed by the account's handle. Select the correct account from the dropdown menu that appears beneath the caption field.

The tagging dropdown displays a list of matching account names and handles as you type. Click the correct account name to insert the tag into your caption.

Step 4: Complete the rest of your post and publish as usual. The tagged account will appear as a clickable link when the post goes live.

Platform-Specific Tagging Notes

Tagging behaves differently depending on the platform. Review the notes below for the platform you are posting to before tagging an account.

Instagram Account Tagging

Instagram does not support the account suggestion dropdown that appears on other platforms. To tag an account in an Instagram caption, type @ and then paste the account's exact username directly after the symbol. The tag will not appear as a linked account inside your social media publishing tool, but the account will be tagged correctly when the post publishes to Instagram.

Instagram Location Tagging

To tag a location on Instagram, the location must have its own dedicated Instagram account. If you type a location name and no results appear, the location does not have an associated Instagram account and cannot be tagged. Contact the location directly if you need to confirm whether an Instagram account exists for that location.

LinkedIn Account Tagging

LinkedIn's API does not support tagging accounts whose usernames contain special characters. If a tag is not working for a LinkedIn account, check whether the account's username contains any of the following characters and remove them from your search: | { } @ [ ] ( ) < > # / * _ ~

Note that the @ symbol is supported as the initial tagging character, but not within the username itself.

Limitations and Frequently Asked Questions

Which social media platforms support account tagging? Account tagging is supported on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tagging behavior varies by platform — review the Platform-Specific Tagging Notes section above for details on how each platform handles tags.

Can I tag an account without enabling Platform-Specific Captions? No. Platform-Specific Captions must be enabled before you can tag an account in a caption. If the tagging dropdown does not appear when you type @, confirm that the Platform-Specific Captions toggle is turned on in the post creation panel.

Can I tag multiple accounts in the same post? Yes. You can tag multiple accounts in a single caption by repeating the @ tagging process for each account you want to mention.

What if the account I want to tag doesn't appear in the dropdown? If an account does not appear in the dropdown, confirm that the account handle is spelled correctly. For Instagram, the dropdown is not supported — type @ and paste the exact username directly. For LinkedIn, confirm the username does not contain special characters that are unsupported by the LinkedIn API.

This article does not cover:

• Creating a social media post from scratch, see How to Create and Publish a Social Media Post
• Scheduling social media posts, see How to Schedule a Social Media Post
• Managing your connected social media platforms, see How to Connect Your Social Media Accounts

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