JessicaMastodon newbie here— When it comes to discoverability, is it better to use hashtags in the post itself, or is commenting after the fact with relevant hashtags still okay? Does the algorithm acknowledge key words at all, or is it solely reliant on hashtags?
PictoPulse356@fountainwrites There is no algorithms in mastodon, so in my opinion shouldn't make any difference, just use the hashtags that you want.
David Zaslavsky@PictoPulse356 @fountainwrites (I accidentally clicked through to your profile and noticed this)
Indeed there's no algorithm; people who follow a hashtag just get posts that include that hashtag inserted into their feed in chronological order. So if I understand correctly what you're asking: you should include hashtags directly in the post you want to make discoverable. If your hashtags are in a separate reply, then it'll be the reply that is made discoverable, not the original post. (Some people will click on the reply and then they'll see the original post anyway, but not as many.)
By the way, one notable difference between the Mastodon community and some others (like Instagram, I think? 🤷) is that people here tend to consider it a bit tacky to use a whole lot of hashtags (I'd say 8-ish or more) in one post. It can come across as inauthentic. I don't know if that's useful info for you, but if so, now you know!
Anopka@fountainwrites As long as your post (or toot) is public, it doesn't matter where you put hashtags. Silent posts (formerly called "unlisted") however don't benefit much from hashtags.
Some Mastodon clients display hashtags at the end of a post a bit different when the last paragraph only consists of hashtags (for example the current web version of Mastodon displays them as buttons, tags, or labels, however you'd like to call them).