Hey guys it's Mark here from Editors Keys
and in this Instagram Masterclass
we're gonna teach you
exactly how to use Instagram and explode
your growth. This video is all about
hashtags but if you haven't seen our
other videos make sure you SUBSCRIBE to
the channel and watch our entire
Instagram playlist because honestly
there is some great content there.
So what are hashtags I'm sure many of you
know what they are and I'm sure many of
you use them but for those of you who
are new to Instagram hashtag is
basically a way of categorizing your
video so you can make it discoverable, if
you just post an Instagram close to your
feed you're only going to be sharing
that to the people who actually follow
you on Instagram, so by including a
hashtag let's say #Coffee
everyone who searches for the hashtag
coffee could possibly find your post so
it's a great way of getting your content
out there to millions and millions of
people.
So you're thinking okay this sounds
pretty good, next time I take a photo
I'll upload it and include hundreds of
hashtags. Well wait, before you think of
doing that it's actually a really bad
idea who is actually a hashtag limit and
at the moment Instagram sets that at 30
hashtags, so if you think of doing like
60 hashtags
it's not gonna work in your favor so
definitely don't do that. So I would
recommend doing a high quality tag. Don't
just fill them up with rubbish hashtags
it kind of looks like spam and it's not
gonna help your post, oh and by the way
if you're not following us yet make sure
you follow us on instagram at @editorskeys
like our photos, leave us a comment
and we'll make sure to comment back as
well okay so now let's look at what
types of hashtags you should use
Now it's important when you research and
post your hashtags you want to be
posting to hashtags that have a lot of
posts in them, so some big tail
hashtags we also want to be looking for
niche hashtags, hashtags where there
aren't too many posts so if we look into
this here so if we go to #Singing
you can see there are 9.8 million
posts to this so if you're quite
a new Instagram profile you're going to
find it quite hard to rank within this
hashtag. So if we look at #singing with
the hashtag singing with the microphone emoji
there's only 95,000
which is still quite high, but it'll be
much easier to eventually trend into a
tag which has less posts into it so if
you can find a niche hashtag to use and
you should definitely be using that same
hashtag in all of the photos that you
post on Instagram it'll be much easier
for you to rank.
I mean imagine how it will look in about
a year or twos time if you've got one to
two hundred photos in hashtag which
doesn't have that many posts in it, say
four to five thousand but one to two
hundred of them are your photos you're
gonna be ranked a little bit higher it's
gonna help push you into the next
bracket of Instagram hashtags but also
when people scroll through this hashtag
here you know imagine you have close to
200 images into this feed here what
you'll do is you'll see your images
popping up time and time again and
that's a great way to be discovered over
time. As I say over time you've got
the work in for this to really work. So
next how do you actually find the
Instagram hashtags that you should be
using on Instagram?
The best way I find is if you go into
'search' here you go to the search box at
the top here make sure you've got 'tags'
selected at the top and just start
typing in the word that you're trying to
rank for so it could be photography it
could be street photography it could be
singing like in our previous example so
I'm searching for singing here and as
you can see in this list as it populates
you start to see the amount of posts
which are inside that hashtag so some
of these aren't loading quite properly
but if we go to singing I'll kind of try
and go into that so you can see that's
got 9.8 million posts inside there as we
scroll down this list you can see
there's ones like #singingtalent and
that has 4575
there's #singingvines which has 22,000
posts there's #singingvideo with
190,000 posts so you really want to keep
scrolling through this list and look for
ones like this one here we've got
#singingQueen and it just has three
thousand eight hundred and fifty four
posts inside it so if you were a female
singer it's worth considering posting
into that hashtag and the reason why I
like doing on Instagram is it's
populating this with hashtags that
people are actually searching for as
well so these aren't just like random
hashtags where you'll never be found
people are actually using and searching
for these hashtags so it's a really good
thing to use now the next thing you want
to do we're gonna jump back into this
search list here. if we
tap the top one here and go to #singing
as it loads you'll see along the top
here you get related hashtags now this
is a really good tip and secret to
finding the next best hashtag to use
because if you use the search box and
just type in singing it's only going to
find hashtags with the words singing in
or sing it's not going to find related
hashtags so if you look here you can see
we've got #vocals #sing
#songcover #InstaSinger
so let's go on #instasinger
you can see here as this load it's only
got 272,000 now if you look again under
related so you could use that insta
singer but look here under the related
we've got #dailysingoff #singing
#InstaMusician
#songcover - so let's type so
let's press the #songcover that's going
to that and we can see that's got
340,000 posts and
again we've got related hashtags here
below that and I'll scroll across try
we'll
try find a really nice looking hashtag
so got a #vocalsingingcover #topvocalist
so let's go into that and as
this loads that's got two hundred and
fifty five thousand posts and what I
would do is just keep going through
these are related hashtags and try and
find some good big hashtags to target
but also find some medium and some small
ones as it's much easier to rank in the
smaller ones to begin with so how do you
trend well if we've been following those
tips before this will really help I mean
let's be completely honest if you've got
a brand new Instagram feed you're not
going to be trending any time soon it's
all really about the hard work but if
you go through this search results
section and you post into those small
within those smaller niches that will
help you as you go into the bigger and
bigger hashtags and that's really going
to help your growth over the next year
to two years and it is about that hard
work don't think you can just post one
photo on Instagram and you're gonna blow
up overnight that's never gonna happen
if you've seen videos on YouTube about
that ignore it's not going to happen
you've got to put the work in. Get
involved in the community and that's the
next thing we want to talk about how to
get involved in the community this is
how you do it you want to make sure that
you're not just posting a photo and then
leaving, if you're getting comments make
sure you comment back it's really nice
if you are the person who's left a
comment to get a reply from the person
who's actually posted that photo it
feels really good you're making someone
feel good about themselves they're gonna
be interested in what you do they may
give you a follow and they may look at
all of your future posts so it helps build
that trust build that engagement don't
just go through and spam just a nice
photo, nice photo,
nice photo get involved ask people
about what cameras
they've been using what microphones they
use how they have got that great picture
on their feed things like that will help
you really get involved in the community.
There is a way and this is a nice
little secret tip here of how you can
get more involved in the community by
using hashtags to your advantage when it
comes to search, so what we're gonna do
here and this is a fairly new feature
you may be aware of this it's a fairly
new feature to Instagram and it can be
really great so let's just say in this
example you're a photographer and you're
interested in street photography, so
we're gonna search for street
photography and here and you can see
there's 46 million posts now well this
one's probably a little bit broad to
follow but let's say you are really
interested and that is the community
that you want to be involved with what I
would recommend here at the top you can
see there's now a 'Follow' button if you
press that follow button you're going to
be now following the hashtag 'street
photography' so your feed will be
populated with users photos, who use the
hashtag you don't necessarily have to be
following those users either so
following a hashtag is a great way to
get inspiration for your next post it's
a great way to get involved in the
community as you're getting kind of your
niche coming directly to you so you can
comment on it imagine as well when you
start using the hashtag people are going
to see you and find you that same way so
it's just, you know the old saying "what
goes around, comes around" it's certainly
true in Instagram you post great content
you receive great content you keep doing
it rinsing and repeating it and your
followers will grow and grow in no time
so I hope you've found all of those tips
really useful if you follow those I
promise that'll help explode your
Instagram growth but there's one key
thing I've left until last and this is
probably the most important tip out of
all if your actual feed post and your
feed is made up of rubbish photos no
matter how you use a hashtag you're not
going to get any likes you're not going
to get any follow so really think
make sure you post a really great image
first then back it up with great
hashtags, using the great hashtags will
help you to become found and it'll help
you to be involved in your community and
for your community to be involved with
you and that's how your
Instagram is really gonna grow. So that's
the top tip there make sure your
Instagram photo is great first of all if
it's not great it's not going to work
but once you have that great image that
you've taken great care of and you've
taken a good photo and make sure you
then back up with some great hashtags
make sure you do the research, that will
help you to be discovered and it'll help
you to be involved within your community
and if you're struggling to get involved
in a community why not come and join
ours you can find us it's @editorskeys
on Instagram check out our page get
involved and we'll make sure we comment
back to you as well, but what about for
you're not that great yet at taking
images on your phone or you don't think
you've got the right apps
well definitely make sure to check out
our next video which is all about the
'best apps to use for Instagram and the
best ways to improve your photos' okay so
that's it for this video I'm not gonna
say bye because you're going to watch
the next video now in our Instagram
masterclass series see you there!