Using the right Instagram hashtags can help businesses expand the reach of the brand, attract consumers and even increase brand awareness. In order to obtain these unique advantages, you need to develop specific strategies.
This often confuses brands because it may be difficult to spot different trends and styles at first glance. Moreover, the hashtag strategy is not the same, which makes it even more confusing for those businesses who try to solve the problem on their own.
Today, we will share how to create an effective hashtag strategy for your Instagram and IGTV accounts, including hashtag research, how to implement and develop a hashtag strategy, and even specific topics you should add to your roster based on your business goals Label. If you want to promote your brand on Instagram or learn how to make money, these strategies are just for you.
What role hashtags play on Instagram
Hashtags on Instagram can be added to posts to become clickable phrases and topics. As long as there is a # sign in front of a word or phrase, any word or phrase can become a valid clickable hashtag.
After the user clicks a hashtag, the page will jump to the discovery feed of the hashtag, where the user can view all public submissions with the hashtag. People can click or search for hashtags that interest them to find relevant content on Instagram.
Since the role of hashtags is to allow users to discover content, by setting the correct hashtags, even target audiences who have never been in contact with your brand before can still discover your brand and products. Instagram recognizes the importance of hashtags on the platform, so the platform expands the functions of hashtags. Brands can now add clickable hashtags to Instagram profiles.
Instagram stories also have hashtags, so you can add available hashtags to the story. When the user clicks on a hashtag, the page will jump to the feed of the hashtag. This is the same as clicking on a hashtag in a post.
Users can also pay attention to the hashtags they are interested in to ensure that the published content with these hashtags can be regularly displayed in relevant feeds.
Sort by category: Most popular Instagram hashtags
There are many factors to consider when using Instagram hashtags, so letโs group around a reliable starting point. Below, you will find popular hashtags sorted by industry or event and other categories. You can use these hashtags to improve your hashtag strategy.
Best Instagram hashtag: general
#photooftheday
#instagood
#nofilter
#tbt
#igers
#picoftheday
#love
#nature
#swag
#lifeisgood
#caseofthemondays
#instapic
#instadaily
#selfie
#instamood
#bestoftheday
Best Instagram hashtags: invite users to like and follow
#followme
#likeforlike
#like4like
#follow4follow
#followforfollow
#f4f
Note: These hashtags cannot guarantee the quality of users who like or follow your account, because posts with these hashtags and other related hashtags are usually used by new Instagram users to trade likes and followers of.
Best Instagram Topic Tag: Fashion
#styleinspo
#ootd
#outfitoftheday
#whatiwore
#shoppingaddict
#beautydoesnthavetobepain
#currentlywearing
#instastyle
#lookgoodfeelgood
Best Instagram hashtags: food and beverages
#instafood
#omnomnom
#foodporn
#food
#foodie
#organic
#healthyeats
#goodeats
#vegetarian
#vegan
#glutenfree
#hungry
#homemade
#madefromscratch
Best Instagram hashtag: travel
#travel
#staycation
#vacation
#sunsout
#resortwear
#tourist
#travelbug
#solotravel
#honeymoon
#traveltuesday
#wanderlust
#wanderlustwednesday
#travelgram
#sun
Best Instagram Topic Tag: Pet Medical
#puppylove
#mansbestfriend
#womansbestfriend
#catsofinstagram
#dogsofinstagram
#dogstagram
#doglife
#catlife
#instapet
Best Instagram hashtags: technology and gadgets
#techie
#latesttech
#ilovemygadgets
#gadgetsgalore
#apple
#android
#applevsandroid
#wearabletech
#VR
#mobile
#makinglifeeasier
#innovation
Best Instagram hashtag: wedding
#ido
#tyingtheknot
#shesaidyes
#heasked
#fallwedding
#rusticwedding
#summerwedding
#weddingfavors
#centerpieces
#sayyestothedress
#bohowedding
#weddinghair
#weddingstyle
#loveislove
Best Instagram hashtag: sports and fitness equipment category
#lookgoodfeelgood
#feeltheburn
#nopainnogain
#workingonabetterme
#cardio
#fitfam
#yogafordays
#fitlife
#trainhard
#noexcuses
Best Instagram hashtag: holidays
#stockingstuffers
#christmasdecor
#spookyhalloween
#happyhalloween
#thanksgivingtable
#turkeyorham
#valentineformyvalentine
#happyfourth
#newyearseve
#newyearsresolution
#holidaycrazy
#holidayspirit
#kwanza
#hanukkahgift
#underthetree
Best Instagram hashtag: Instagram contest
#instacontest
#instagiveaway
#giveaway
#sweepstakes
#contestalert
#contestentry
#winit
#freebie
#winitwednesday
Use hashtags to connect with your target audience
To develop a strong and effective hashtag strategy, one of the key tasks is to understand which hashtags you should use, so that you can maximize the brand’s influence and increase user engagement. Different types of hashtags have different uses, and effective strategies will combine different hashtags to use.
Brand label
You should add a brand tag unique to your particular store in your Instagram profile. They can be used to build brand awareness, and you can encourage users to add these hashtags in their submissions. Examples of brand tags include #LiftUpTheGirls by Harper Wilde, #shwoodshop by Shwood Eyewear and #swlfamily by So Worth Loving.
Location-based hashtags
Location-based hashtags are not suitable for all e-commerce merchants, but if you sell products that appeal to a local audience, you can use this hashtag to your advantage. Are you selling special cups with different country styles? Please use #FloridaLife or #NewYorkDrinks to connect with the right audience.
Entertaining hashtags
Entertainment hashtags are not to increase your audience, but to deepen the relationship between existing audiences and the brand. These topic phrases usually have little to do with the brand itself, but are closely related to the situation of a particular role. In the following example, #shopitlikeithot and #getitgirl are both entertainment-centric.
Popular appeal label
Popular appeal hashtags are universal tags that can be applied to almost any post. They are often used, which means they are also often found by users. Using these hashtags can occasionally significantly increase the popularity of the post, so that the post will appear in front of the existing audience. These examples include #instagood and #lovelife.
Time-limited hashtags
Maybe you want to greet your followers around time or seasonal topics, then you can use hashtags like #caseofthemondays or #summerrain. Time-limited hashtags can be related to a specific holiday, a certain time of the year, or even a certain time of the day. Users like this time-limited content, and they may even actively look for holiday and seasonal content. The following example uses the time-limited #sunsout tag to push its product sunglasses to an interested audience.
Popular hashtags
Like fashion clothes and buzzwords, even popular hashtags that are all the rage have a day when no one cares about them. Sometimes, the hot hashtags people use are only topics that are very popular at the moment. For various reasons, these popular topics have become hot topics of online discussion. However, in many cases, these hot topics are related to current affairs.
For example, Apple releases a new version of the iPhone, or a certain day is the election day of a certain country. These hashtags will not bring you long-term traffic, but if used properly, they can generate meaningful returns.
Niche market hashtags
The audience for certain products has specific interests. For example, a person buying a virtual reality system may be interested in all the latest technologies. Users who are interested in healthy eating may search for phrases like “organic (#organic)” or “eat healthy (#eatinggreen)”. Use niche-specific hashtags to connect with highly relevant audiences.
In the example below, Bremont did this very well. They use hashtags such as #luxury and #watchoftheday because they know that hashtags in these niche markets can connect their brand with their target audience.
Special event hashtag
Sometimes, hashtags can act as reminders like a beacon. They can remind users that your store is hosting a special event. For example, are you going to host a competition? Hashtags such as #contestalert and #instagiveaway can help you find an audience of interest. Similarly, tags like #flashsale and #BOGO can help you find consumers who want to buy discounted products, or you can send a signal to people who follow you that your store is going to have a special offer.
What type of hashtag should I use?
Not all e-commerce merchants will benefit from every type of hashtag.
For example, a business with national or international influence may have no reason to use location-based hashtags, while a B2B business that requires strict professionalism in speaking may not use many entertaining hashtags. It doesn’t matter, you just need to find the method that best suits your own brand and audience.
How many hashtags should I use?
Up to 30 hashtags can be used on a single Instagram post. This answers the number of hashtags you can use, but it does not answer the number of hashtags that should be used. The answer to this question may be very different.
There are many studies and various discoveries surrounding this issue. A fairly consistent conclusion is that you should definitely use multiple hashtags on every post. According to a study by Agorapulse, the number of likes for Instagram posts with hashtags increased by 70%.
As for how many hashtags are most effective, the data are not consistent. Some marketers vowed to say that two hashtags are enough, while others believe that all 30 hashtags should be used. In fact, for a single post, you can find the most effective number of hashtags through testing.
Instagram hashtag tool: streamline the process
Whether you want to add 6 or 30 hashtags to a post, typing so many characters is a very time-consuming task, especially when you encounter errors that cannot even be recognized by the automatic correction function. You can consult any social media manager and they will tell you that this is the last thing we want to happen.
Fortunately, we have tools to help you simplify this process. Here are the tools I want to recommend to you:
PreviewApp: You can save hashtag groups in this app. Apply these hashtags to the content to be published, and then all the hashtags and copy can be posted directly to Instagram. This app can also help you test hashtags and find the hashtags that bring the most revenue.
Later: The “Saved Text” feature allows you to apply the text and hashtags to new posts. Although sometimes you need to change the hashtags, if these hashtags are reused, this app can save you a lot of time.
Tag for Likes Pro: This app can help you find, copy and paste Instagram hashtags on your mobile device. You can create custom lists with multiple hashtags, and then copy these lists directly to Instagram.
If you are not willing to invest in tools just for this purpose, there are more affordable ways. That is to use common social media tools. You can create a new document to save different hashtags, and then use social media scheduling software, such as Agorapulse, Hootsuite or Sprout Social. You can create posts on the desktop, copy and paste hashtags or tag groups into the body as needed. Since all these tools can now post your posts directly to Instagram, this saves you some steps.
How to conduct hashtag research for Instagram
Hashtag research is a key part of Instagram marketing. It can help you identify the best performing and most popular hashtags, provide new ideas for hashtags that you can’t even think of, and help you identify popular hashtags.
Whether you want to increase the length of your list or find new hot topics, you can use the following different strategies to conduct hashtag research. Let’s look at them one by one.
Expanding the reach of Twitter
If you want to find current related hot hashtags or hot topics, Twitter can help you. The platform has a hot topics section where you can see what people are sharing.
Note, however, that hashtags are used differently on Instagram and Twitter, and Twitter is more focused on news. Please keep this difference in mind and use Twitter for research purposes instead of blindly copying and pasting Twitter hashtags directly to Instagram.
Know your competitors
Knowing your competitors’ marketing strategies (including their hashtag strategies) is never a bad thing. Please find the trend of the hashtags they are using. Maybe you will be inspired to think of a few phrases that you want to add to the roster.
Monitoring influencers
Internet celebrities-including small ones-are called internet celebrities because they already have an audience. People will actively seek advice from them, find inspiration in them, or learn professional knowledge. These Internet celebrities may have mastered the rules of the hashtag game and found the terms that perform best. You can take a look at their posts, maybe you will have a lot of gains.
Use hashtag research tools
For a long time, we have always used manual methods when researching hashtags. However, hashtag research tools can identify popular hashtags and more enduring hashtags for you, which can help you maximize the benefits of your business.
In this process, a reliable tag research tool is essential because it can provide you with detailed feedback on specific hashtags that other tools cannot provide.
The following hashtag research tools can help you get started:
Keyhole: Since Keyhole expanded its hashtag research to Instagram, it has been one of the most complete hashtag analysis tools on the market. This tool provides you with a lot of information about each specific hashtag, including how many users add a particular hashtag to their posts, the coverage of the hashtag, and the impression it makes on people. With this tool, you can also check how many featured posts with hashtags are available, and evaluate the popularity of competitors.
Hashtagify: This tool will show you the overall popularity and recent popularity of a particular hashtag. This tool is a great tool for discovering hashtags because it can show you related terms and hashtags that other users included in their posts. You can even track the trend of hashtags over time and monitor their popularity to determine if any hashtags should be removed from the rotation.
Ritetag: If you are looking for a tool that can quickly generate relevant hashtags, then Ritetag is the best choice. This tool will automatically generate recommended hashtag options based on your text or images. You can also link Ritetag to some social media management tools, so that when you create posts in these management tools, you can also get hashtag suggestions.
Should my Instagram hashtag be visible?
If you just want to understand the content of a post, no one will be willing to read through 30 different tags-even if there are only 6 topic tags, there are people who do not want to read it. Pieces of hard-to-read text are also not visually appealing.
Because of this, many brands choose to hide their hashtags and strategically place them under the “see more” option. Some people even go a step further and add significant extra spaces besides “see more” in order to remove a large number of hashtags from the rest of the description. There are also brands that add tags to individual comments on posts, but this may cause hashtags to become invalid.
For most brands, the best option is to ensure that the hashtag is separated from the body by at least one line, and hide the hashtag under the “see more” option. This can focus the user’s focus on the text, thereby increasing the likelihood of the post being read, while keeping the page visually cleaner.
Of course, there are exceptions. That is when you use one or two hashtags for brand promotion or entertainment. In this case, if necessary, put the hashtags above the “see more” fold and make sure they are listed first or on a line in your Instagram body. This makes it easier for users to read.
Although you will encounter this situation, there is no need to separate hashtags in multiple lines at other times. Because if the user clicks “View More”, you don’t want them to scroll multiple times to reach the comment line. If it’s so troublesome, they might not leave a comment.
Prohibited hashtags: the dark side of Instagram
Did you know that there are prohibited hashtags on Instagram? Some hashtags are not even cursing words or very obscene words, but they are still on the “blacklist”.
When Instagram detects that certain hashtags are often used with some illegal content, the platform will “ban” these hashtags. Itโs not surprising that there are some banned hashtags, such as words like “nasty”. But the banning of other phrases like “fitnessgirls” and “tgif” can be said to be a disaster. Instagram will not post new content on feeds of banned hashtags, and the feeds do not even exist.
Disabled hashtags may be temporary or permanent. If you use these banned hashtags, your posts may also be banned. In other words, posts with these banned hashtags may not appear in the feeds of your followers, and even when users search for other hashtags added to the post, they will not see your post. All in all, even if you only use a banned hashtag, all your efforts for this post will be in vain.
When compiling a list of hashtags you want to use, check the complete list of banned hashtags on Instagram.
Measuring Instagram hashtag strategies
All your efforts for marketing should be measured as much as possible. The same applies to our hashtag strategy. Especially when you add a lot of hashtags to your posts, it may be difficult for you to know which hashtags are valid and which hashtags are not. Fortunately, there are several ways to help measure the impact of your hashtag strategy.
First, check the overall growth of your channel. This can be achieved through Instagram’s analytics function, but many third-party social management platforms will provide more details.
Please check whether the impression, influence and likes in your profile and posts have increased. Itโs worth noting how many users did your posts reach through the Discovery channel? Since the adoption of the new strategy, has there been any major changes? You should see these factors increase from month to month. If not, it’s time to adopt a new strategy!
You should also use topic research tools to monitor the hashtags you use frequently to ensure that their popularity is rising over time, not declining. You can also use tools such as Keyhole to track your brand hashtags to see the coverage, impressions, and overall usage of other profiles. This can help evaluate how helpful your brand hashtag is to you and whether it has gained organic appeal.
Third-party tools can also provide data on hashtag usage and its results. Sprout Social has excellent hashtag data to show you the hashtags that generate the best engagement and you use the most.
Find the best Instagram hashtags for your brand
Instagram hashtags are an important part of Instagram marketing. If you combine a hashtag strategy with a strategy that focuses on how to attract more Instagram followers, you will find that the number of likes, comments, and followers on your account will increase immediately. If you do not adopt the right strategy, then your marketing may not be able to reach its full potential on the platform. Please use the tools and hashtag suggestions detailed in this article to create your own high-performance hashtag lists that will expand the coverage of your posts and attract new audiences. Remember, you need to switch hashtags based on the analysis and evaluation results to get the best results.