Hashtags are one of the most effective ways to get more likes, attention,
and engagement on your Instagram posts.
If the hashtag is used properly, that is.
How to use Instagram Hashtags.
Instagram's monthly active user base is well over one billion.
With so many accounts fighting for the spotlight,
it is becoming more and more challenging to be seen.
This visibility all depends on your posting strategy,
and a large part of that is how you use hashtags.
In this video, we’re going to look at how many tags to use,
how to know whether a hashtagis good or not,
how to research them, and other must-know tips.
But before we jumping into it, we need to understand how do Instagram hashtags work.
How do Instagram Hashtags work?
Hashtags help organize Instagram's photos and videos.
They’re used to identify and filter content on a specific topic, so your fans, community,
and Instagram explorers have a better chance at finding you.
You can add up to 30 hashtags in the caption or comments of your post.
When you add a hashtag to a post,
the post will then be visible on the particular hashtag page.
So now if anybody searches for that hashtag, your post will be there.
The likelihood of seeing your post at the top of a given hashtags page
depends on many different aspects:
How often the hashtag is used.
If it's is overused, chances of your post ending up at the top of the page is unlikely.
How popular your post is.
Does it already have lots of likes and comments?
When you shared it.
Although you'll see quite a few older posts in a given hashtag search,
it’s likely that the top posts will be only a few days old.
The engagement of your audience.
How large is your audience?
How often do they engage with your posts?
So, all these things affect your visibility on a hashtags page.
The higher your post appears, the better,
as it will be more discoverable by people who don’t follow you yet.
You can add hashtags to your Stories as well, up to 10, in fact.
Hashtag pages also have an Instagram Story icon in the top left corner.
Click on it, and you’ll see a collection of Stories posts
tagged with the hashtag by people with public profiles.
Another place you can add hashtags is in your bio.
When a user taps it, they will be taken to that hashtag page.
For businesses with popular branded hashtags, it’s a great way to foster engagement
or collect user-generated content.
Now that you know how the tags work, we can jump into the tips & tricks part.
How many tags to use?
Experts' thoughts on this topic vary.
On the one hand, the more tags you have, the more exposure your content may get.
On the other hand, too many tags might look spammy and discourage people from engaging.
Remember that adding unrelated or overused tags to your posts just to make up the quota
won’t make growing your audience any easier.
SproutSocial, the social media management platform, have revealed in their blog post
that “Top-performing posts appear to follow the rule of “less is more.””
For the most part, brands include between two to five hashtags on average.
After reading these findings, our marketing team decided to do research of their own,
and spent a month testing the use of fewer hashtags to see how the response changes.
The results?
They found that for Printful, more hashtags means better results.
With fewer tags, however, engagement for each post dropped five times.
So in our case, the more strategic hashtags we use,
the bigger the possibility for us to reach a larger audience.
As you can see, it’s all about experiments and analyzing your account performance.
So be sure to try out different amounts of tags, monitor the results,
and make a decision for your brand account.
What’s a good hashtag?
As I already mentioned, hashtags help Instagram recognize what your post is about.
If the system finds that your post is relevant, high quality,
and corresponds to the hashtags used,
your post might even be allowed on the Explore page.
This is where Instagram users often go to find content similar
to what they already have on their feed.
Using hyped-up or super popular hashtags without purpose
will simply make your content get lost in the competition.
But using niche tags that nobody is looking for
won’t help your content get recognized either.
The sweet spot you want to hit is somewhere in between the two extremes.
Focus on tren ding hashtags connected with your account, business, and target audience.
Just be careful using pop culture references.
They might help you reach like-minded Instagrammers,
but you don’t want to risk losing your brand name and identity
among hashtags that overshadow it.
When it comes to picking tags or creating them from scratch,
it all comes down to what you and your content is all about.
There are five basic types of hashtags:
branded, industry, community, content, and campaign tags.
Branded hashtags must be unique to your account or business.
It has to be simple enough for your followers to recognize and use—it could be your name,
brand or company name, your slogan, or a key concept to your Instagram account.
Then there are industry hashtags.
Out of all the hashtags used on Instagram,
industry hashtags are the ones with the highest competition.
Since there are millions of people using them every day,
add only a few industry hashtags to your posts.
As always, pick them carefully: only the ones that really matter to your brand.
If you’re a professional photographer, these could include tags like
#photographer #portraits #photostudio.
Community hashtags connect small groups of like-minded users.
Using community hashtags makes you discoverable by topic, niche, location, etc.
and there’s a higher possibility to gain followers organically
and grow your own community.
The best way to find these community-oriented hashtags is by looking to see which hashtags
your audience, or favorite accounts, are already using.
If you’re a photographer set in California
you could use tags like #CaliforniaPhotographers
or #photoaddict.
Content hashtags stand for the content your audience is looking for to get informed or inspired.
To get these right, try to think like your customer and think about what they would search for.
For example, #howto hashtags are highly used on Instagram
and can be a good start for building your hashtag strategy.
So try using #howtophotograph or #howtoeditphotos.
Planning your next marketing campaign, event, or special offer?
Create a campaign hashtag and ask people to engage with it!
Or be a part of a larger movement and create buzz around your posts
by using hashtags for events happening now.
It's a great way to connect with others and improve your chances
to be discovered by local and global audiences.
To find the right tags for your brand, the only way to do it,
you guessed it, through doing research.
How to research hashtags.
The first step is to browse Instagram accounts similar to yours.
This also includes your competitors and industry leaders.
Find out what industry hashtags they use,
and look for hashtags that are likely to be searched by Instagram communities in your niche.
See what your competition is doing,
as well as brands and accounts that your target audience is likely following.
Getting this kind of inspiration from can be super helpful
in gaining an understanding of what hashtags are trending.
The second step in doing purposeful research is finding time-saving tools.
There are tons of Instagram hashtag generators out there—like Webstagram, Photerloo,
All Hashtag, Display Purposes, and Hashtracking.
These tools will help you create hashtag lists easily,
but don’t rely on generator app results alone.
Use generated hashtags as an inspiration and combine them with your own strategy!
And don’t overlook Instagram’s own analytics panel.
Instagram analytics provides enough data to show you if the tags you’re using
are working for you and if you should think about improving your posting strategy.
Select the post you want data on and tap "View Insights" below the post on the left.
Swipe up to see all the insights for that post,
including the number of impressions from hashtags.
After you've done your share of research and found a few ideas that could work,
type them into the Instagram search bar and see what autofills.
The way this works is similar to Google Autocomplete.
The tags suggested by Instagram
are the ones frequently searched on the platform based on your query.
As you can tell, these suggestions could also be a good addition to the hashtags you use.
Now that you know how hashtags work and how to find and research them,
let's go over one more set of rules to keep in mind.
Tip 1 - Avoid spammy hashtags.
Yes, you should use tags that have a following and people look for,
but using ultra-popular, borderline spammy hashtags will make your post disappear entirely.
Using popular hashtags will turn people off
and decrease the engagement on your posts and stories.
So avoid writing tags like “tbt”, “instagood”, “photooftheday”, “fashion”, “food”, “nature”.
Tip 2 - Use different tags for each post.
We recommend using a variety of hashtags on your posts and stories
so your posts can reach different communities.
Of course some tags may overlap, but when you find a good hashtag you’d like to use,
consider related hashtags and add them as well.
Here's how to do that.
On the hashtag page, right above the “Top” and “Recent” tabs,
you’ll find a list of related hashtags that you can scroll through by swiping left.
This is a great way to find relevant hashtags that might be a bit more niche.
And that means an even more targeted audience with less content to compete with.
Don’t forget to mix up the hashtags from one post to the other,
depending on what appears in your post.
Using the same list every time limits your exposure to new followers.
For example, if you used a community tag like #CaliforniaPhotographer
try using #LAPhotographer in the next post and see how these compare.
Tip 3 - niche tags are best tags.
If you’re thinking about creating your own community hashtag,
remember that the narrower the scope of the hashtag,
the more engaged the users tend to be!
Instead of using the most popular Instagram hashtags,
it’s better to find and use hashtags that are smaller, more niche,
and have a truly engaged audience that’s relevant to your industry.
The more niche the topic, the more conversations users are having around it,
so it pays off to really hone in on a topic or theme.
And you’d be surprised by how niche hashtags can get!
So for example, if you’re after people who run marathons
then hashtag #run42 will bring in a lot more engagement than just #run.
Tip 4 - Use hashtags in your Instagram Stories.
Whatever tags you decide to use,
Instagram will add your stories to the hashtag search for 24 hours.
If we look at the current trend for Instagram Stories,
people educate, inspire, share behind-the-scenes of a business or event,
demonstrate their products or services, organize Q&A sessions,
share feedback reviews, and so much more.
Introduce yourself or your business and show what’s behind it—
you’ll see, the more stories you add, the more engagement you receive.
When adding hashtags on top of your Stories content,
make them small so they don't divert attention from your post.
You can even shrink your hashtags or even hide them behind an emoji, sticker, or GIF.
Remember that you can add up to 10 hashtags on a Story,
but take care not to clutter your content.
Being where your target audience and customers are is vital for any brand.
If you’re serious about getting more organic followers and likes on Instagram,
getting that exposure will require some work, but the reward will be worth it.
If you found this video helpful and want to know more about Instagram,
Printul’s blog has two amazing articles about driving sales with Instagram
and the ultimate guide for using hashtags.
We’ll add them to the description below.
I hope you enjoyed this video and have fun creating your custom Instagram strategy!