Before we talked about the significance and functionalities of a hashtag, let’s talk about its basics. ‘Hashtag’ is basically a word commonly known by its symbol ‘#’. In social media networks such as Instagram, hashtags are basically hyperlinked. When a user taps them or clicks on them, the Instagram app opens up all the related hashtag pages.
If you are familiar with Instagram marketing, then there is a lot more to the world of Hashtags and linked pages that you need to know. Hashtags can help you with almost everything related to social media marketing ranging from promotion to discovery, and these two factors can bring in long-term and immediate benefits. Here are some insights into how hashtags exactly work and how they can be used as a marketing tactic.
#1: How to Choose the Right Hashtag Mix For Your Instagram
Hashtags carry a wide range of information with themselves about the content. Hence, it is very important that you choose your Instagram hashtags very carefully. Below listed are the 10 types of Instagram hashtags that you can consider;
- Campaign Hashtags – These are the hashtags that are specified for a certain marketing initiative.
- Branded Hashtags – These include hashtags that are unique and specified to your business and their distinctiveness.
- Event Hashtags – These include hashtags that promote holidays and happenings.
- UGC Hashtags – These are the hashtags that are designed for customer use.
- Daily Hashtags – They reflect daily themes such as #Monday Motivation.
- Location Hashtags – They demonstrate what will be happening when and where. They are primarily used for local customers.
- Industry Hashtags – Hashtags that explain your business type, work type, or field.
- Descriptive Hashtags – These include hashtags that explain the content or a topic.
- Community Hashtags – These amplify concerns, social issues, and voices and share information.
- Phrase Hashtags – These are hashtags with an inspirational statement or a social message.
The total number of hashtags that you can use on an Instagram post at once, depends on your content type. Reels and feed posts support about 30 hashtags, whereas an Instagram story may include up to 10 hashtags. Although it is very easy to add as many hashtags as possible, it is not advised and is not considered the best practice.
Marketing experts recommend using a certain number of hashtags (maxing out) based on the keywords from different search categories. However, Instagram itself recommends using a minimal number of hashtags for better search results. The ideal number of hashtags recommended by Instagram is 3 to 5 instead of 10 to 20.
How to Find the Best Hashtag for Your Instagram?
Regardless of how many hashtags you are using, it is more important that they actually work and make difference. Let’s look at some of the tactics and tools that can help you find the best hashtag for your content.
Checkout Instagram Hashtag Search
The simplest way to find the right hashtags is to use the keywords of the phrase. But this works only if you know what you are looking for. All you need to do is to type phrases or keywords into the app, and you can easily see how many times the hashtag is being used. The best to use is the hashtag which has driven more traffic than the one which appears only a few times. Additionally, you can also look for similar hashtags and relevant data.
Follower Research
If you are looking for new ideas or unsure of where to start, then you can look for other Instagram accounts for guidance. Competitors think of influencers or industry leaders etc. Open their profile and then tap on ‘Following’. At the top of their account, the first thing that you will see will be the list of hashtags that the account user follows. You can tap on the list and start following any hashtags that you find relevant. If you find any more with better potential, you can add them too.
Use Hashtag Research Tools
To find the right hashtag research tool, you first need to know that not all the native tools claiming to get you what’s popular right now, are not all worth it. RiteTag is one of the most reliable third-party tools where you can upload media and caption from an Instagram post and it will your app to auto-generate relevant hashtags. The app also gives you color-code options which help in differentiating evergreen hashtags from trending ones. You can also copy and paste the hashtags list from RiteTag into the scheduling tool or add them to Instagram posts instantly.
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#2: How to Correctly Place Hashtags In Your Instagram Content
All type of posts on Instagram supports hashtags. Here we have discussed the most effective types and the role they plan in Instagram marketing.
Instagram Feed Posts – You can use both video and image feeds under this category and they both support hashtags. You don’t need to add your hashtag list in the image or video but in the caption. It is best to add a hashtag list at the end of the caption because adding them to the beginning of the caption text does not lend a pleasant landing experience for your audience. Hashtags cover the location and industry of the creators also, and both keywords and phrases can be used to improve customer outreach and discovery.
Instagram Reels – Instagram Reels also work like Instagram feed posts, so you can follow the same recommendations as mentioned above for adding hashtags. This means that you need to avoid text overlays and include hashtags in the caption.
Instagram Stories – With Instagram stories, you have two options for adding hashtags. You can either use a text overlay, where the hashtags become tappable automatically. The hashtags stickers also work the same way.
Instagram Bio – Hashtags can also be added to your brand’s Instagram bio, but you must know that they work differently here as compared to the content. Adding hashtags in your Instagram bio neither increase your reach nor improve your profile’s chances to appear in search. But, if your team is using Instagram to gather UGC or for running branded campaigns, then by clicking on the hashtags in your bio, people can see all the posts that your customer made about your brand.
Read also -> Top Five Application For Instagram Stories In 2022
# 3: How to Track the Performance of Your Instagram Hashtags
For developing an effective Instagram hashtags strategy, it is very important to know which type of Instagram content is contributing towards reaching your goals, and which of them is just taking up resources and space. Let’s have a look at the third-party and native tools that are available for better tracking of your Instagram hashtag performance.
Instagram Insights – Both Creator Studio Insights and Instagram Insights can easily tell you how much audience outreach are you generating from your hashtags. However, each of these tools tallies the reach of your hashtag against a certain post. So if you add up multiple hashtags from every single post and reach every single of them, then you will only get confused and can’t see much of a bigger picture of your hashtags’ contribution.
Third-Party Analytics – If you are looking for granular details, then third-party hashtag monitoring solutions and social media scheduling dashboards are a must. These tools easily get integrated with your Instagram account and monitor every activity and reach generate from a certain post. And, you can also tally interactions produced against every hashtag.
Conclusion
Whether you want to drive discovery, increase customer outreach or promote a brand campaign, hashtags are the key components, especially if you right know which one to use and how. We hope that this guide would help you get better mileage from your Instagram hashtags so that you can better reach your audience and marketing goals.
