A Beginner's Guide to Hashtags on Instagram
The world of Instagram Hashtags can seem overwhelming when you’re just getting started using Instagram for your business marketing…
There’s so much to learn about Instagram as a whole that hashtags just seem like yet another thing to add to the list. But without using them, you could be severely limiting your potential growth on the platform, and therefore stopping potential customers from finding out about your business.
Want to watch instead of read? Check this out on YouTube:
What are ‘hashtags’?
A hashtag is basically a way to ‘tag’ a piece of content with a certain topic or category, so that it can be searched for and found by people who type that hashtag in to Instagram’s search bar.
It’s basically like a filing system, but for social media! They keep content organised and easily searchable.
There are millions and millions of hashtags used on Instagram; some of them are just one word (always with a # at the front, to distinguish from just a normal word), and some can be several words strung together to create a short phrase.
If a hashtag is popular, lots of people will use it to tag their content (in the hope of their post therefore being seen when people search for that hashtag!) and they can end up with millions of posts associated with them.
However, some hashtags are more ‘obscure’ and less people will use them, and so they might only have a few posts associated with them, and it’s probably unlikely that many people are searching for that hashtag.
On Instagram, when you search for a hashtag, you can see a feed of ‘Top’ posts (most popular/relevant posts) that have used that hashtag, and also Most Recent. Your goal when you’re using hashtags is always to get your post to gain enough popularity and be good quality enough to be featured on the ‘Top' Posts’ feed for a hashtag, because that’s what people see first.
How Do you use them on an Instagram post?
You can use up to 30 hashtags per Instagram grid post, and I’d usually recommend using all 30 if you want the best chance of your post being seen in a hashtag search!
You can include the 30 hashtags in your Instagram post caption, or you can post them all in the first comment straight after you’ve posted the image, if you prefer the way it looks (some people prefer to have the hashtags ‘hidden away’ in the first comment). It doesn’t really make a difference.
How do you find the right hashtags to use?
There are three big mistakes I see people making when they start using hashtags on Instagram:
Using hashtags just for your industry
If you are a family photographer, you might see other photographers using hashtags like ‘#toglife’ or ‘#nikon500’, which would be classed as industry hashtags. But who are the people who are actually searching for these and using these? Just other photographers! And other photographers aren’t your target audience who you really want to be seeing your posts. Your actual target audience won’t be using jargon like that of industry related hashtags to search for content on Instagram; they’ll be using hashtags that relate to their own family life, rather than your work life.Using hashtags that are too popular
If you use hashtags with millions of posts associated with them, then your post will quickly disappear in the ‘Most Recent’ feed of that hashtag, because so many other people will be using it and their posts will appear above yours when they do. This hinders your chances of your post gaining popularity and then featuring on the ‘Top Posts’ feed - which is the goal as this will make more people see your post (it will improve your post ‘reach’).Using the same hashtags over and over
Instagram will cotton on if you keep using the same hashtags over and over again, and will see it as being spammy, and they might limit your reach even more (show your posts to less people) if they think you’re doing any spammy tactics. So it’s important to mix them up and keep them fresh!
Further reading: 4 Ways to Improve Your Instagram Post Reach (that don’t involve hashtags)
So what should you do instead?
Remember to use hashtags that your target audience are actually searching for and engaging in! Sometimes hashtags can actually appear to be a really random phrase(eg. ‘#calledtocreate’) but it has nearly half a million posts associated with it. This is because hashtags can sometimes turn into ‘communities’ where people with the same interests using the same hashtag to connect with each other and be inspired.
You should also make sure you aren’t using the hugely popular (1 million+ posts) hashtags because no one is likely to find your content in these. Likewise with hashtags with less than 5,000 posts.
My recommendation would be to use a mixture of hashtags between 5k and 100k (maybe a couple of hashtags of up to 500k!) to make sure you have the best reach potential.
I would also suggest using some kind of app or Notes area of your phone to save different collections of hashtags based on the different types of content you’re using (I use Later.com to do this and for all my planning and scheduling on Instagram!) and to also analyse and switch up your hashtags every month or so.
You can unsubscribe at any time. Please read my full Privacy Policy.
