My student Kerri posted in my private program InstaGrowth Boss this question
about hashtags: "I'm struggling with hashtags.
Sometimes my posts get 200 views from hashtags and sometimes less than 20 and
sometimes they don't even show up in insights at all.
So what the heck is going on?" If you've ever struggled with using hashtags for
your business, you're not alone. In today's video,
I'm going to cover all the yeses, the nos,
the do's and don'ts of using hashtags to grow your business's Instagram account.
There's a lot of stuff out there about hashtags. Some people will tell you, Ah,
they're not relevant anymore. I mean, 2013's calling - ring, ring.
But other people will say hashtags are still really important in 2019 going into
2020 for your business. So today's video,
I'm giving you all the answers you need and stay tuned until the end.
I'm going to share with you a tool that I love. It's relatively new.
You probably haven't heard of it,
but it's cut down my hashtag research time into half,
maybe even a third of what I used to spend on hashtags. Plus,
I'm seeing some really good results from using the hashtags this tool is
recommending, so I'll show you that tool at the end.
Using the hashtag tips I'm about to share has worked for my student Kerri and
myself.
I've put my own tips to the test and one recent post of mine got 12,000
impressions just from the hashtags alone.
I'm Elise Darma and I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs, freelancers,
business owners like yourself,
use Instagram to actually grow your business and today,
from beautiful Samara, Costa Rica,
I'm going to walk you through how to use hashtags for your business.
Let's dive into the six tips / common questions I get all the time from business
owners specifically about hashtags. #let's do it.
The first tip is probably the most common question I get. "Elise,
How many hashtags should I use?" So as you probably know,
Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags maximum on every single post.
When you think about what hashtags are,
they are essentially a tagging or categorization system built into Instagram.
Now there aren't a lot of search-friendly tools or aspects of Instagram aside
from your username and your name field and you can check out that video that I
did on optimizing your profile right over here.
So when it comes to having your posts and your profile rank in search,
that is where the power of hashtags really comes into play.
So hashtags are the SEO of Instagram. As I said,
you can use 30 per post. So it begs the question,
why wouldn't you use 30 per post?
Now there are some experts out there that say 30 looks spammy,
just focus on three to five really niche hashtags. I've tried this,
you can try it too,
but I still find that I get the best reach when I use 30 really good hashtags.
Every hashtag is a new way for your target follower to find you.
So why wouldn't you use all 30 opportunities that you have?
That's my take on hashtags. Again, this topic is kind of up for debate.
I recommend to you to put it to the test.
Use 30 hashtags for one post and use five niche hashtags for another post.
And see if there's a difference, but the camp that I'm in, it's using all 30.
The second question I get all the time is, "Elise,
where do I put these hashtags? I found them. They're the best ever.
Where do I put them?
Do they go in my caption or do they go in the first comment?" The answer to this
question is it's totally up to you. According to Instagram.
It doesn't affect your post reach whether you put the hashtags in your caption
or in the first comment. For a long time,
I used to put my hashtags in the first comment because I liked to separate them
from the story that I was sharing in my caption.
So if you're like me and you want to separate your hashtags from the story in
your caption, go ahead and put your hashtag in the very first comment.
But first,
the key with this tip is you have to publish the hashtags in the first comment
immediately after publishing your post. You can't wait.
You can't publish your post, do a few things,
and then paste your hashtags in the first comment;
you have to do ideally within 10, 15 seconds of publishing your post. That way,
Instagram knows to associate those hashtags in the first comment with this post.
Now, if you don't want to worry about timing and acting really fast like this,
the easier route is to just put your hashtags in your caption.
Now you can use a scheduling tool like Later, that's my tool of choice,
where you write the caption and then just boom, paste the hashtags right below.
Then when your posts gets published, either automatically or manually,
you know that you're not going to forget them.
They're there and they're going to be associated with your post.
So I tend to do that one now more because I don't really care if people can see
my hashtags in my caption. They can copy them, whatever, um,
but more so what I'm concerned about is not forgetting the hashtags and making
sure that they're being associated with my post right away.
The third tip I have for you is how to choose hashtags or find really good
hashtags to use with your posts.
So the first thing I like to do is think about the types of hashtags I can
brainstorm.
So look at the subject matter of your image or your video,
what's in it. You can start to brainstorm words,
even enter them into instagram.com as a hashtag and look to see if they populate
and more than that,
when you're on instagram.com check out the suggested hashtags that Instagram
populates under your search.
So start with keywords based on the actual subject matter that's in your post.
Then look at hashtags related to the location.
Then look at hashtags related to the topic that you're talking about in your
caption.
Then you can think about hashtags related to any of the brands featured in your
post.
You can think about hashtags related to the emotion your showcasing in the post,
and also think about any hashtags related to the lifestyle of what you're
talking about in your post. Of course, if you're in business like me,
you're going to want to look at industry and niche hashtags too.
So there's a whole bunch of types of hashtags you can look up when you're
brainstorming, which ones to include in your post.
The second place where I like to look at hashtags for ideas is on the Explore
page. So as you might know,
the Explore page is catered to you based on your history as a user on Instagram.
So Instagram is going to show you posts that it thinks you're going to like.
Look at those posts. They're probably related to your business, your industry,
your niche, and check out what hashtags those posts are using.
So that's a great way to get some ideas rolling as well.
The fourth tip is how big your hashtags should be.
What do I mean by this? Well,
if you ever tap into a hashtag on your phone or desktop,
you're going to see a bunch of information about the hashtag and one of the
things you'll see is the number of posts that use that hashtag.
This is kind of what defines how big it is.
So some hashtags are really popular and they have millions of posts associated
with it. Some are really small and niche and they don't have that many posts.
So that's what I mean when I talk about how big the hashtag is.
So this question is hard to give you just a direct answer on because really it
depends on how big your account is. If your account has a lot more followers,
you can use bigger hashtags and reasonably be found for those hashtags.
What happens when you're a smaller account,
you're using really big hashtags is your accounts posts just won't be seen for
that hashtag you're going to be drowned out by accounts that are bigger than
yours or have more followers. So as a middle ground,
I would say on average,
most of my students have between 500 followers to a thousand followers.
So if you're in that range,
what I recommend for how big your hashtags should be,
look at hashtags starting at about 10,000 posts up to 200,000 posts.
Okay?
So that's a good range to hang out in because they're not too small that they're
not even being used anymore.
And the hashtags also aren't too big that your posts are just going to be
drowned out by them. So as you're doing your hashtag research,
make sure that there's anywhere between 10,000 and 200,
maybe 300,000 posts for that hashtag.
And don't forget you need to find hashtags related to your niche.
You can break the rules a little bit and choose a few of the bigger hashtags if
it's beyond two or 300 just so you get your niche in there. Um,
but I wouldn't do too many. I would only do maybe three,
maybe four of those bigger hashtags.
You can do some super niche ones if you really want,
if they're hyper-targeted to your community.
But for the majority of your hashtags,
they should be between 10,000 and 200,000 posts per hashtag just to be on the
safe side.
One caveat here is to make sure that your hashtags are still active and not
banned. So banned hashtags are a thing.
This happens when enough Instagram users report a hashtag for,
you know, indecent or abusive type of content. Even if the hashtag is,
you know, sounds innocent enough.
Sometimes people take them over and use them for gross or wrong things.
So when there are enough posts that have been used with that hashtag and enough
people have reported it, Instagram will ban that hashtag.
So just double check as you're doing your research. Um,
scroll down the page a little bit and you'll see a little message from Instagram
if it's been banned, telling you it's no longer in use.
My fifth tip on using hashtags is to differentiate your hashtags between using
them in your posts for your feed and using them in your Stories.
So you can use up to 10 hashtags in your Stories. Yay.
So that means your Stories can actually be found by targeted hashtags.
And there are a few different rules.
So going back to the hashtags for your feed posts,
we talked about them being on the smaller side,
right between 10 and 200,000 posts.
And you want them to be niche with your hashtags for your Stories.
You don't want them to be niche.
You want to choose the bigger industry related more of the overarching term
related to your business, your market, whatever.
So you want to go bigger for your hashtags in your Stories. Again,
you only have 10 and yeah,
you just want to keep them as the big overarching idea of what industry you're
in. Now,
some people aren't jazzed about adding 10 hashtags to their beautiful Stories,
so there's a couple of ways that you can actually hide your hashtags in your
Stories, your 10 hashtags.
So one way is to use the eyedropper tool and blend them into the background
using a color in your story so that they're totally hidden.
Another way is to minimize your 10 hashtags, so shrink them down,
but not too far.
You want to shrink them down and then choose a GIF to cover up over the
hashtags.
The reason why I say to not minimize them too small is if they,
if you completely shrink them down and they're illegible,
Instagram won't even pick them up as a hashtag that you can trend for.
So just play around with the size. Don't make them too small. Um,
but you can definitely hide them behind a GIF or use the eyedropper tool to
blend them into the background.
My sixth and final tip for using hashtags for your business is to keep them
relevant.
Sometimes people use popular hashtags and they'll tag their posts using those
popular hashtags to sort of ride the wave of that hashtag.
But that's bad news for your business.
If people see your post trending or in a hashtag category that's not related,
they're going to actually report and flag your posts.
You don't want Instagram's algorithm to think that you're being naughty and to
ultimately downgrade your account because you're using hashtags in a way that's
not really relevant. So keep them relevant. Going back to my third tip,
how do you find relevant hashtags? Well,
my favorite tip is to go into instagram.com type in my niche or keyword and
underneath that list is going to be a populated list of suggestions.
So Instagram is doing a lot of the work for me to give me a lot of ideas of how
I can get more relevant hashtags.
You can also use two tools to assess which hashtags have worked well for you in
the past.
So Later actually has a hashtag analytics tool and you can go into your account,
checkout your hashtags from the last week to the last month and Later will show
you and rank which hashtags got the highest number of impressions or reach.
So looking at this tool will give you a really good indication of which hashtags
got you the most exposure and that you should continue using them. Lastly,
my favorite tool that I love to use to find hashtags in a flash is called Flick.
Flick is sort of like that suggested hashtag feature built into instagram.com
except it's a lot faster so I always just pop in my topic based on my caption or
my posts and Flick right away recommends a ton of related hashtags.
The other cool thing about Flick is I've actually connected my Instagram account
to Flick so it can analyze my typical insights to understand what hashtags I can
reasonably trend for.
So Flick is just acting in a bit of a smarter way because its recommendations
are catered to the history of my account and how likely my account can really
trend for a hashtag. So go ahead and check out Flick.
I have a link right below this video so that you can sign up and try it out for
a little bit. It is a paid program and I use it in my business. But like I said,
it's really useful for me because you know,
back in the day it used to take me maybe 20 minutes to do hashtag research for a
post.
Now I can literally do it in three to five minutes because Flick is so good at
recommending suggested and related hashtags.
So if you want even more practical how to tips just like this video so that you
can use Instagram as a revenue stream in your business,
meaning actually bring in clients,
leads and sales from the free social media app,
I invite you to check out my free Instagram masterclass.
It's all about how you can double your leads,
your clients and sales for free organically, no paid traffic,
all from Instagram.
So head to the link right below this video and check it out at
FreeInstantcourse.com to ease and revenue,
add hashtags. I'll see you in the next video.
My third tip is how to choose or find relevant.
Hello,
doing great and yelling at the camera right.