It’s a mistake to underestimate the power of the hashtag on your Instagram account. Using the right strategy can give your posts some seriously extended reach and can result in more followers, likes, comments and even conversions.
The hashtag was born in 2007 on another well-known social media platform, Twitter, although it wasn’t officially a feature until 2009. A Silicon Valley blogger and product consultant, Chris Messina, brought up the idea of repurposing the pound sign for organizational purposes. He even approached Twitter with the idea and was rejected. It wasn’t until 2 years later that Twitter gave in and made searching for hashtags a feature, due to their popularity.
The popularity of hashtags made its way to Instagram, and the platform fully embraced them. According to Wordstream, posts with hashtags have a 12.6% increase in engagement when compared to posts without them. If you post often, which is definitely recommended, then this increased engagement can really add up over time and help you grow your account to meet your social media goals.
Instagram has 3 places that you can use hashtags:
- Instagram Feed
- IGTV
- Instagram Stories
There are limitations for each of these that are important to note
Both Feed and IGTV posts have a limit of 30 hashtags. If you use more than that, then they will not show up in search.
Stories have a limit of 10, however, only the first 3 tags will show in search.
In hashtag search there are 2 ways to find hashtags: “Top” and “Recent”
The “Top” tab is based on an algorithm and displays content based on each individual user’s interests and prior behavior on the app. This means that every user will see different posts in this tab that are tailored specifically to them in an effort to create the best possible experience on Instagram.
The “Recent” tab displays posts in chronological order. We’ll explain why this is important for your strategy later.
Feed & IGTV
The Instagram Feed is where most of the action is. There are definitely some guidelines to follow to make your Feed posts as effective as possible, as well as some things you will need to play around with until you get a winning formula.
There is a divide among experts as to how many hashtags you should actually use. One camp argues that too many hashtags will leave a bad impression, as they come off as spammy, and to limit the number of hashtags you use to a handful of quality tags per post. This argument is made by experts like Wordstream or Sprout Social.
On the other side, the argument is that using hashtags is one of the only ways to be found by people who aren’t following you, so why would you not use as many as possible? Social Media Examiner and Elise Darma make this argument.
Personally, I fall in the use as many hashtags as possible camp and here’s why. Instagram will cut your captions short if it they are over 125 characters and add a “more” icon. This makes it really easy to keep your tags out of sight, making it look less spammy. I’m also not convinced that most people care how many hashtags you use in your post. It’s also important to keep in mind that your posts are not guaranteed to show for the tags you put on it, this is another reason to use as many as possible.
That being said, experiment with using a lot or a few, try different things, keep track and see which method works better for you!
Another strategy to hide hashtags is to put them in the 1st comment. Timing is important here. You want to do it quickly so you pop up in the recent tab. I recommend just putting them in the caption as it saves you from having to rush to get your tags in there. It’s better to just have them in there immediately because it really doesn’t make much difference whether they are in the caption or the 1st comment.
Hashtag Popularity
Ok, now that we got how many hashtags to use and tag placement out of the way, here is the real strategy when it comes to hashtags.
Not all hashtags are created equal. The cool thing is that you can look up how popular hashtags are simply by looking them up in the tags search bar. Instagram will tell you how many posts have been made that have those tags.
A good strategy is to diversify your hashtag popularity. You don’t want to put all your eggs in the most popular tag basket because your content will quickly get drowned out with other content in the “Recent” tab.
It’s really important to use tags that are relevant. Using really popular tags just to increase reach is a bad idea, not only because it will get drowned out with other content rapidly, but also because people typed in that tag to see relevant content and if your content isn’t relevant people won’t engage with it and may even flag it.
Do your hashtag research and come up with a few in each of these categories:
- Very Popular – 500,000 to 1 Million posts
- Fairly Popular – 100,000 to 500,000 posts
- Niche – Under 100,000 posts
- Branded Hashtags – Tags tied directly to your business
Ideally you want to have multiple lists of relevant hash tags that have a few of all of these categories. The reason for this is that Instagram will actually limit your reach if you use the same tags for every post.
Try using 3-5 very popular tags to see if one sticks. In reality it is unlikely that the most popular tags will be effective because your post will quickly be buried in the “Recent” tab and will only really be viewable for a very short amount of time. However, with high quality content and a bit of luck, this might end up getting you an incredible amount of engagement.
Try using 4-10 fairly popular tags as these will remain in the “Recent” tab for longer and still have a broad audience. These are generally going to be more effective than very popular tags simply because they will stick around longer for people to see, but they too will get buried after some time.
Try using 5-12 niche tags. These are going to be your heavy hitters. They will stay around in the “Recent” tab for a good amount of time and are specific enough to where those that are looking for them have a higher chance of being interested and a higher chance of engaging with your post. These are also the tags that are most likely to be featured on the “Top” tab, which I’ll cover in a bit.
Try using 1-3 branded tags. Branded tags are generally not about new people finding you, at least not immediately. They’re more about encouraging your current followers to use them in order to increase awareness of your brand, create community with your followers and personalize/ humanize your online presence. Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign is a good example.
Finding Hashtags to Use
Ok, now what specific hashtags should you use? That’s really going to be industry and brand specific, but there are some good ways to find quality hashtags that fit in your popularity tiers. I would start with checking out the tags your competitors are using. This might give you good hashtag ideas and it’ll give you insights into your competitor’s hashtag strategy.
Checking out what Instagram auto fills in the tag search is another good way to see what might pop up. You can also use a service like Later to get deep into hashtags. The 2 most important things to consider when deciding which hashtags to use are relevancy and audience. Relevancy is pretty straight forward to nail down.
Audience, on the other hand, is not something a lot of businesses take into account for their Instagram hashtags. You want to think of what people who may be interested in your content are searching for. A lot of businesses forget that other people may not know as much as they do about their product or service and use tags that only people who know a lot about it would know, i.e., your competitors.
Getting Featured on Top Posts
Getting featured in the Top posts for a hashtag can be great for reach! Getting featured is based on 2 factors: how much engagement your post received and how quickly it received it.
Instagram’s algorithm is more likely to think you have quality and engaging content if it receives a lot of engagement in a short amount of time. This means that it is important for your existing followers to engage and for your hashtags to do well in search. Remember, high quality content is king.
Insights Feature
Use the view insights tool to see how effective your hashtags are. Keep track of which hashtags are repeatedly performing well for you. With each post, your list of highly effective tags will grow and your reach will expand because of it. Keep your hashtags organized and categorize them, so that when you post it is easy to tell which tag categories are performing and which are not.
The insights tool will show you the top 5 hashtags for each post, keep track of these. Tags that aren’t on the top 5 might still be getting you impressions, so keep track for multiple posts. Eventually you’ll notice which tags are not showing in the top 5 for any post. Try replacing them with other relevant tags.
Using hashtags for IGTV is very similar to feed. The main difference between these features is that IGTV is specifically for videos that are over 1 minute in length and it will show as a large square with the IGTV logo in search. If you have a working strategy for Feed posts, the same strategy would probably work for IGTV posts.
Stories
Stories have been a huge success for Instagram, making them an effective way to reach people. A couple things to remember about stories:
- A story only lasts for 24 hours
- There are only 2 possibilities for adding hashtags to your story; stickers or a text box.
Because a story only lasts for a day, instead of focusing on your fairly popular and niche tags, you’ll want to go BIG. Choose very popular tags to add so that as many people possible are in a position to see you story.
If you decide to go with a sticker for your hashtag, then you are limited to a single tag. If you decide to go with a text box, then you can put a max of 10 tags in there, but keep in mind that only the first 3 tags will show on search, so might as well just keep it to 3.
People started trying to disguise their hashtags in stories by decreasing font size and using color to camouflage them. Instagram quickly became wise to this and now this will result in your tags becoming nonfunctional. So just keep them legible and you should be alright.
Conclusion
Hashtags have the potential to make a big difference in the amount of engagement your Instagram posts receive. Besides your profile name, they are the only way you can be found on the platform. There is a massive amount of content uploaded to Instagram every day, because of this it’s important to have a hashtag strategy in place and to analyze and revise your strategy as you go. Make lists of hashtags beforehand so you don’t rush yourself and so you can keep track of which tags are performing best for you.
What do you guys think? Anything I forgot or any strategies you think work better? How many hashtags do you normally put in your posts?
Direct Placement, LLC is a digital marketing agency dedicated to shaping our advertising efforts to best fit your company’s needs. We are a Google Premier Partner and Bing Ads Accredited Company that specializes in a number of digital advertising formats. From our trademarked flat-rate SEM marketing service to social media marketing and even directory profile creation, we have a number of services that we can use to help your company thrive. Contact Direct Placement, LLC to learn more about how we can start transforming your business one click at a time! You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Blogger for more regular marketing content.