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How to choose hashtags on instagram


8 Tips for Choosing the Right Hashtags for Your Hashtag Aggregator Tool

Hashtags! They're such a seemingly simple thing, but they're vital for helping people find things on social media.

If you are a social media person, you've definitely seen them. Sometimes, posts actually have more hashtags than normal text. Interestingly, they started out as a techy way to organize and start conversations. They've since grown to become the building blocks of social media marketing.

While social media platforms that utilize hashtags actual work as a hashtag aggregator tool by gathering all relevant posts during a search, you can specify your own hashtags to create your own unique social media feed.

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

Why Hashtags are Important

While hashtags may seem pointless to a novice, the truth is that they are a powerful tool to help you market your business. This is because they can increase your reach, amplify your brand, and get your content to people who need to see it.

In fact, with hashtags, you have one of the easiest ways of expanding your influence beyond your current audience. By using relevant hashtags, people searching for those keywords can easily find your post and updates and might follow your brand.

Hashtags aren't just some simple fad. Instead, they help to drastically increase engagement. That's why businesses focus so much on picking the right hashtags and trying to create their own trending hashtags. HubSpot analyzed popular hashtags on Twitter and found that some of those hashtags led over a 1,000% increase in engagement.

While the original idea to use the # sign to group conversations started with the chat client IRC in the late 1990s (bonus points if you remember using that one), it didn't become trendy until 2007 when Chris Messina suggested using # signs to tag and group conversations. Since then, hashtags have become the best way to help social media users find related content and conversations.

If your brand is using the right hashtags and gathering related content, your customers and followers are going to see you as a leader in your industry.

Now that you know that hashtags are an essential marketing and engagement tool, it's time to take a look at what exactly a hashtag aggregator tool does. Then, we'll let you in on the secrets of picking the right hashtags.

Using a Hashtag Aggregator Tool

A social media network is essentially one massive hashtag aggregator tool. When you use the search function to find a keyword or phrase, the results pull not only phrases from posts, but matching and related hashtags.

However, you want to be a little more specific. For instance, maybe you only want to gather posts with hashtags about wildlife conservation to match your brand's mission to create a more sustainable future. This is where a hashtag aggregator tool can help.

You choose just the hashtags you want (more on how to pick the right hashtags coming right up). Then, the tool pulls just those hashtags from your chosen networks. You embed the feed on your website or even at an event or conference. This increases engagement and helps establish your brand as a go-to source of information.

Remember, you don't always have to be the one posting something new and innovative. Just gathering the conversations together is a great engagement and marketing strategy.

Content aggregated from a branded hashtag or Instagram account to a portfolio page:

Content aggregated from a branded hashtag to pull content posted by multiple accounts into a website footer section:

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

Choosing the Right Hashtags

Obviously, you've got to choose the right hashtags or you're not going to aggregate the best possible content. So, without further ado, here's how it's done:

1.
Learn from influencers

Influencers play a crucial role when it comes to marketing brands. Therefore, searching for influencers in your niche might be helpful. Through them, you can quickly identify the most successful hashtags relevant to your brand and use them.

If you're struggling to find influeners or aren't sure what type of influencers have the most pull in your industry, consider using Alexa's guide on influencer marketing or Orbit Media Studio's guide to finding influencers.

2. Use social media tools for research

Most social media platforms that use hashtags also provide tools to show you what's currently trending. For instance, when you log in to Twitter, you'll see a list of currently trending hashtags. While that doesn't mean you should use those, if you see something relevant to your campaign or brand, it may be worth checking out.

If nothing else, you may just find other relevant hashtags that work better. You should also look at any social media analytics (within the network's settings). These often list trending hashtags and even hashtags relevent to your brand.

3. Use hashtag aggregators and analytics tools

Before you start using a hashtag aggregator tool, you'll likely want to do some hashtag research to discover the right hashtags. When you can't find what you need through a social media network's tools, opt for third-party tools.

Don't worry about your budget. There are numerous free and low-cost options to discover and monitor hashtags to find what's best for your brand. These help you find hashtags to aggregate and which ones to use for your own posts. A few great lists to get you started include:

  • Influencer Marketing Hub's Free Hashtag Tracking Tools to Monitor Hashtag Performance Online
  • Talkwalker's 15 Free Hashtag Tracking Tools
  • Keyhole's Top 15 Hashtag Analytics Tools

Of course, you can also use your hashtag aggregator tool to help find the right hashtags.

Curator aggregates content from all of the following social media and content platforms:

You can pick a few hashtags that are relevant to your brand and then monitor the posts to see what other hashtags are trending in your niche. Review the quality of the content and decide which hashtags are right for you.

Curator.io even offers a free version to help you find hashtags easily without a major investment.

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

4. Know your hashtags

Just because a hashtag is popular, it doesn’t mean that it is going to be helpful to you. Sometimes a trending hashtag may not be suitable for your brand image. Therefore before you settle for the hashtag to use, research it to ensure it fits the type of conversation you want.

Such due diligence ensures that whatever hashtag you use is beneficial to your business. Otherwise, you end up supporting inappropriate circumstances or raunchy campaigns that can be harmful to your business.

5. Find a unique hashtag

Start your own conversation and campaign by creating your own unique hashtag. Select a tagline that is catchy, unique, and resonates with your target audience.

While there are numerous hashtags already out there, you can indeed create something unique with a little effort. Just use a third-party hashtag analytics tool or your hashtag aggregation tool to research if a hashtag is already being used.

6. Use clear hashtags

Besides being unique, it is paramount that the hashtag is clear when it comes to the message it relays. It should match the event or campaign you intend to use it in. Don’t let it be vague or ambiguous.

A hashtag that is not very clear on the message it's relaying might end up relaying the wrong message. For example, the case of the Susan Boyle hashtag, where her PR team decided to use the hashtag #susanalbumparty, read it with a dirty mind and you get the importance of a clear hashtag.

To drive the point home, also check this example: #therapist. A simple hashtag, yet it may convey the wrong meaning. What the user really meant was “Therapist,” but it was interpreted by some people as “The Rapist. ” Just make sure your audience understands your hashtag without confusion whatsoever.

Curator.io is an easy-to-customize aggregator that lets you pull from over a dozen sources. If you'd like to give Curator.io's free forever plan a spin sign up today.

7. Keep It short and simple

Remember the simpler it is, the easier it is to understand. Not to mention, the easier it is for others to use. That is why it is advisable to keep your hashtags short and straightforward. Lengthy hashtags tend to be difficult to read. Therefore avoid them as much as possible.

Try to keep your hashtag less than 10 characters. Also, consider using one hashtag for each campaign. For your hashtag to pick up momentum quickly, it should not take much of the audience's time trying to understand it. If it's difficult to understand, many people will end up skipping it.

8. Make sure the hashtag is relevant

The primary reason for using hashtags is to grow your audience reach. Therefore, if your hashtag is not relaying information relevant to your brand, you have already lost the race. The hashtag you use should be able to relate to your services and products.

You cannot just use any popular hashtag. If you are not careful, you may end up promoting somebody else just because you were not diligent enough when choosing your hashtag.

Note that, once you are using a hashtag you should never leave it unattended. This is because a hashtag, whether new or old, might easily take a detour and go in the direction you least expected. Thanks to technology, you can use tools such as Curator.io to monitor your hashtags.

Also, promote your hashtag in order for it to get the traffic it needs. Put it in your products, mention it in your commercials, and get people to use it in their tweets, Instagram posts, and Facebook’s posts. Get the word out there to as many people as possible and then let it work for you.

Remember, the success of hashtags is unique to each social media channel, be it Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Therefore you can get better results by customizing your content to suit each channel instead of posting the same content on every network.

Key Takeaways

Hashtags play a significant role in marketing your products and services. When used well, they are a powerful tool that can enable you to increase your market reach and boost your brand. So, if you have not been using hashtags, now it’s your turn to start using them. To reap maximum benefits; ensure you also select the best social media wall solution to help you display your content and engage your audience

Ultimate Guide [+101 hashtags for 2023]

What are Instagram hashtags?

Top Instagram hashtags

Types of popular Instagram hashtags

Instagram Hashtag FAQs

7 tips for how to use hashtags on Instagram

Instagram hashtags can make or break your Instagram marketing strategy. Use them correctly and you’ll get your posts seen by more people likely to be interested in your products or brand.

But use the wrong and you can actually do damage, from annoying potential followers to getting penalized by Instagram’s algorithm.

To use hashtags for Instagram effectively, you need to understand exactly how they work, and put some thought into a strategy.

You’re in the right place to do just that. Watch our video below, or read on!

Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.

What are Instagram hashtags?

A hashtag is a combination of letters, numbers, and/or emoji preceded by the # symbol (e.g. #NoFilter). They are used to categorize content and make it more discoverable.

Hashtags are clickable. Anyone who clicks on an Instagram hashtag or conducts an Instagram hashtag search will see a page showing all the posts tagged with that hashtag.

Why use Instagram hashtags?

Hashtags are an important way to expand your Instagram audience and get more reach. When you use a hashtag, your post will appear on the page for that hashtag. If you use a hashtag on your Story, it could be included in the relevant hashtag Story, which also appears on the hashtag page.

People can also choose to follow hashtags, which means they could see your hashtagged post in their feed even if they don’t follow you (yet).

Instagram hashtags can be a great way of building community online so people are motivated to engage with your brand. For example, as the way people work out suddenly changed in 2020, Nike Los Angeles used the #playinside hashtag to feature local people getting active in their homes.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nike LA (@nikela)

All that being said, times they are a changin’. We recently ran an experiment looking specifically at the effectiveness of Instagram SEO vs Hashtags in 2022. And the results, well let’s just say they were eye-opening.

Check out the article or watch the video below to see what we found:

Top Instagram hashtags

These are the top 50 hashtags on Instagram:

  1. #love (1.835B)
  2. #instagood (1.150B)
  3. #fashion (812.7M)
  4. #photooftheday (797.3M)
  5. #beautiful (661.0M)
  6. #art (649.9M)
  7. #photography (583.1M)
  8. #happy (578.8M)
  9. #picoftheday (570.8M)
  10. #cute (569.1M)
  11. #follow (560.9M)
  12. #tbt (536. 4M)
  13. #followme (528.5M)
  14. #nature (525.7M)
  15. #like4like (515.6M)
  16. #travel (497.3M)
  17. #instagram (482.6M)
  18. #style (472.3M)
  19. #repost (471.4M)
  20. #summer454.2M
  21. #instadaily (444.0M)
  22. #selfie (422.6M)
  23. #me (420.3M)
  24. #friends (396.7M)
  25. #fitness (395.8M)
  26. #girl (393.8M)
  27. #food (391.9M)
  28. #fun (385.6M)
  29. #beauty (382.8M)
  30. #instalike (374.6M)
  31. #smile (364.5M)
  32. #family (357.7M)
  33. #photo (334.6M)
  34. #life (334.5M)
  35. #likeforlike (328.2M)
  36. #music (316.1M)
  37. #ootd (308.2M)
  38. #follow4follow (290.6M)
  39. #makeup (285.3M)
  40. #amazing (277.5M)
  41. #igers (276.5M)
  42. #nofilter (268.9M)
  43. #dog (264.0M)
  44. #model (254.7M)
  45. #sunset (249.8M)
  46. #beach (246.8M)
  47. #instamood (238.1M)
  48. #foodporn (229.4M)
  49. #motivation (229.1M)
  50. #followforfollow (227. 9M)

Popular B2B Hashtags

  1. #business (101M)
  2. #entrepreneur (93M)
  3. #success (82M)
  4. #onlineshop (70M)
  5. #smallbusiness (104M)
  6. #marketing (69M)
  7. #branding (38M)
  8. #marketingdigital (39M)
  9. #innovation (14M)
  10. #ecommerce (12M)
  11. #retail (8.2M)
  12. #onlinemarketing (8M)
  13. #contentmarketing (6.5M)
  14. #marketingtips (6.2M)
  15. #marketingstrategy (6M)
  16. #marketingstrategy (6M)
  17. #startups (5.3M) 
  18. #management (5.1M)
  19. #businesstips (5.1M)
  20. #software (5M)
  21. #B2B (2.6M)
  22. #instagramforbusiness (1. 4M)
  23. #b2bmarketing (528k)
  24. #eventmarketing (408k)
  25. #b2bsales (125k)

Popular B2C Hashtags

  1. #training (133M)
  2. #smallbusiness (104M)
  3. #business (101M)
  4. #sale (95M)
  5. #onlineshopping (85M)
  6. #marketing (69M) 
  7. #marketingdigital (39M)
  8. #promo (35M) 
  9. #socialmedia (32M) 
  10. #digitalmarketing  (25M)
  11. #startup (24M)
  12. #socialmediamarketing (19.7M) 
  13. #sales (19M) 
  14. #advertising (15M) 
  15. #ecommerce (12.3M) 
  16. #networking (12.1M)
  17. #onlinebusiness (11.4M) 
  18. #onlinemarketing (8M) 
  19. #smallbiz (7M) 
  20. #company (7. 9M) 
  21. #startuplife (5.6M) 
  22. #contentmarketing (6.5M) 
  23. #socialmediatips (3.2M)
  24. #marketplace (2.5M)
  25. #b2c (350k)
  26. #b2cmarketing (185k)

Keep in mind that the most popular Instagram hashtags are not necessarily the most effective.

A large number of posts may mean lots of people follow that hashtag, but it also means there’s a ton of content on it and your posts might get lost. Instagram suggests using a combination of popular and niche hashtags to reach different audiences, from broad to specific.

Types of popular Instagram hashtags

Instagram breaks hashtags down into nine distinct types:

Product or service hashtags

These are basic keywords to describe your product or service, like #handbag or #divebar

Niche hashtags

These get a little more specific, showing where you fit in the context of your industry, like #travelblogger or #foodblogger

Industry Instagram community hashtags

Communities exist on Instagram, and these hashtags help you find and join them. Think #gardenersofinstagram or #craftersofinstgram

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Special event or seasonal hashtags

These can refer to real holidays or seasons, like #summerdays, or they can be used for all those National [Thing] Day holidays, like #nationalicecreamday or #nationalnailpolishday

Location hashtags

Even if you geo-tag your Instagram post, it can still be a good idea to include a hashtag that refers to your location, like #vancouvercraftbeer or #londoneats

Daily hashtags

Every day has plenty of its own hashtags, from #MondayBlues right through to #SundayFunday. We created a whole list of daily hashtags for you to choose from if you’re looking for an easy source of hashtags to add to your posts.

Relevant phrase hashtags

These hashtags combine elements of product hashtags, niche hashtags, and community hashtags. Basically, they’re phrases people use on Instagram to connect to existing communities in a slightly insider way, like #amwriting or #shewhowanders

Acronym hashtags

Perhaps the best-known acronym hashtag is #TBT for Throwback Thursday. Other popular acronym hashtags include #OOTD for outfit of the day, #FBF for flashback Friday, and #YOLO for you only live once.

Emoji hashtags

These hashtags can include emojis on their own, like #????, or words or phrases with emojis attached, like #sunglasses????.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cartems Donuts (@cartemsdonuts)

Branded hashtags are another great option for businesses on Instagram. We’ll get into more details on those later in this post.

Instagram Hashtag FAQs

How many hashtags to use on Instagram

How to hide hashtags on Instagram

How to find trending hashtags on Instagram

How to search multiple hashtags on Instagram

How to find the best Instagram hashtags for YOUR brand

How many hashtags to use on Instagram

You can include up to 30 hashtags on a regular post, and up to 10 hashtags on a Story. If you try to include more, your comment or caption won’t post.

That said, just because you can use that many hashtags for Instagram doesn’t mean you should. There’s no right number of hashtags for every business, or even for every post by the same business.

The consensus is that about 11 hashtags is a good number to start with. But the most common number of hashtags to use on Instagram is between 3 and 5.

You’ll need to do some testing to determine what works best for your particular business.

How to hide hashtags on Instagram

When you’ve spent time crafting a great Instagram caption, you may not want to end your post with a prominent collection of hashtags. Fortunately, there are a couple of easy ways to make your hashtags less visible.

How to hide Instagram hashtags in a comment:
  1. Write your caption as usual but don’t include any hashtags.
  2. Once your post is published, simply click the speech bubble icon under your post to leave a comment.
  3. Write out or paste the hashtags you want to include in the comment box and tap Post.
  4. On mobile, your hashtags won’t be visible unless a user taps View all comments. However, on desktop, your comment will remain in the top position, so this trick works better if you’re targeting a mobile audience.


Source: VW on Instagram

How to hide Instagram hashtags in the caption

You can also use hashtags within the caption itself without them being super-visible.

  1. At the bottom of your caption, tap Return or Enter. If you don’t see a Return or Enter button, tap 123 to bring it up.
  2. Enter a punctuation mark (try a period, bullet, or dash), then hit Return again.
  3. Repeat steps 2 to 4 at least three times.
  4. Instagram hides captions after three lines, so your hashtags won’t be viewable unless your followers tap … more. Even then, your hashtags will be visually separated from your caption so they don’t distract from your copy.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rocky Mountain Soap Company (@rockymountainsoapco)

How to hide hashtags on Instagram Stories

You can hide hashtags on Instagram Stories, too. One option is simply to minimize the appearance of your hashtags by pinching and shrinking them to make them quite small. You can also tap the hashtag sticker to change it from a white background to a semi-transparent one.

If you want to hide your hashtags entirely, you can paste an emoji, sticker, or GIF overtop to obscure them.


Source: Christina Newberry

How to find trending hashtags on Instagram

Unlike Twitter, Instagram doesn’t publicize a list of trending hashtags. However, if you search for a hashtag on Instagram, you’ll see how many posts use that hashtag. You’ll also see a list of other popular Instagram hashtags using similar words, with post counts included too.


Source: Instagram

To search for a hashtag on desktop, enter the hashtag including the # symbol into the search box. On mobile, enter your search term in the search box, then tap Tags.

If you’re paying attention to your Instagram feed, you’ll learn to quickly spot trending hashtags as they emerge. Don’t be too quick to jump on a trend, though. Only post using a trending hashtag if it really makes sense for your business, and for the specific content in your post.

How to search multiple hashtags on Instagram

The easiest way to search multiple hashtags on Instagram is to set up search streams in a social listening tool like Hootsuite to track the hashtags you’re interested in so you can see all the relevant content on one screen without having to conduct each one as an individual Instagram hashtag search.


Source: Hootsuite

Instagram business profiles can conduct up to 30 unique hashtag searches in any given seven-day period.

We wrote a full post about the benefits of social listening if you want to dig deeper into how this works.

Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.

Get the free guide right now!

How to find the best Instagram hashtags for YOUR brand

Here’s the truth. You could upload your photo to one of the many Instagram hashtag generators out there and get a bunch of free suggestions for hashtags. But, these suggestions aren’t going to be as strategic and effective as doing the research yourself.

Here’s some tips to try for coming up with Instagram hashtags that will actually drive reach and engagement.

Check out the competition

You don’t necessarily want to model your competition’s strategy too closely, but taking a look at the hashtags they use can give you some good clues about what’s working for others in your industry.

Maybe you’ll discover new hashtags to add to your repertoire. Or you could decide you don’t want to compete for the same eyeballs, in which case you can search for alternative hashtags to use.

See what hashtags your audience is already using

After all, if your audience is already using a certain hashtag, then other people just like them are probably using it too. Finding these existing Instagram communities is a great way to expand your audience and reach the people who are most likely to be interested in your business.

Keep an eye on your top followers and see what hashtags they’re using. Instagram’s search tool can give you some additional information about which hashtags the people you follow care about. When you conduct an Instagram hashtag search, the search tool will show you if anyone you follow also follows that hashtag. (Note that this only works on mobile, not on desktop.)


Source: Instagram

Use Instagram’s Related Hashtags feature

On any hashtag page, right above the “Top” and “Recent” tabs, you’ll find a list of related hashtags that you can scroll through by swiping left.


Source: Instagram

This is a great way to find relevant hashtags that might be a bit more niche than the big keyword-based hashtags you originally searched for. That means a more targeted audience with less content to compete with. These can be some of the best hashtags for Instagram brands wanting to connect with passionate communities.

Create a branded hashtag

The best hashtag for your brand may be one you create yourself. A branded hashtag is simply a tag that you create to promote your own brand or campaign.

You can then let your audience know about your hashtag by including it in your Instagram bio and highlighting it in your captions and Instagram Stories. You could also consider running a contest with a branded hashtag to popularize the hashtag while also collecting user-generated content.

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A post shared by lululemon (@lululemon)


Source: Lululemon on Instagram

Make sure to follow your branded hashtag, both within the Instagram app and using a stream in your social media dashboard, so you can monitor how it’s being used. Look for opportunities to reshare great content or connect with influential members of your audience.

To follow a hashtag within Instagram, simply tap it, then tap the blue Follow button on the hashtag page.


Source: Instagram

Use Hootsuite’s hashtag generator

Coming up with the right hashtags for every. single. post. is a lot of work.

Enter: Hootsuite’s hashtag generator.

Whenever you’re creating a post in Composer, Hootsuite’s AI technology will recommend a custom set of hashtags based on your draft — the tool analyzes both your caption and the images you’ve uploaded to suggest the most relevant tags.

To use Hootsuite’s hashtag generator, follow these steps:

  1. Head to Composer and start drafting your post. Add your caption and (optionally) upload an image.
  2. Click the hashtag symbol below the text editor.

  1. The AI will generate a set of hashtags based on your input. Check the boxes next to the hashtags you want to use and click the Add hashtags button.

That’s it!

The hashtags you selected will be added to your post. You can go ahead and publish it or schedule it for later.

7 tips for how to use hashtags on Instagram

1. Use Insights to see which tags work best

If you’ve made the switch to an Instagram business profile, you have access to post insights that tell you how many impressions you received from hashtags.

1. Select the post you want data on and tap View Insights below the post on the left.

2. Swipe up to see all the insights for that post, including the number of impressions from hashtags.

This data helps you figure out which hashtags are most effective for improving reach.

2. Include hashtags on Instagram Stories

Hashtag pages have an Instagram Story icon in the top left corner. Click on it and you’ll see a collection of Stories posts tagged with the hashtag from people with public profiles.


Source: Instagram

There are two ways to add hashtags to your Stories. The first method is to use the hashtag sticker.


Source: Instagram

Or you can simply use the text tool and the # symbol to type out the hashtag the same way you would on a photo or video post.

3. Avoid banned hashtags and spammy hashtags

When inappropriate content becomes associated with a hashtag, Instagram might ban that hashtag.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t use it at all. Instead, it means that if you click on the tag, you will only see top posts. You won’t see recent posts, and there won’t be any Stories associated with the hashtag.

Here’s what it looks like when you run into a banned hashtag:


Source: Instagram

The only way to know if a hashtag is banned is to check it before you use it. This is a good practice to put in place every time you add a new hashtag to your repertoire. Using banned hashtags can cause a drop in engagement, as your use of legitimate hashtags might also become less effective because you could be dropped in the algorithm.

Even if they’re not banned, you should avoid hashtags that shamelessly solicit likes and followers. Examples include #followme, #like4like, #follow4follow, #tagsforlikes, and so on.

Using these will attract bots, spammers, and other Instagram users who have no intention of engaging with you in any meaningful way. They also show your followers that your brand is okay with engaging in spammy behaviour. And that’s not a good look.

4. Understand how hashtag pages work

Hashtag pages are a great way to expose your content to a new audience, especially if you can get featured in the Top section.

Hashtag pages show off all the content associated with a specific hashtag. If someone searches for a post and yours is the most recent with that hashtag, it will be the first thing they see in the Recent section.

Of course, it’s much easier to stay at the top of the Recent section for a less-popular or really niche hashtag.

Keep in mind that the Recent section is sorted based on when each post was originally shared. If you add hashtags later, either through a comment or by editing the caption, this won’t bump your post up for recency.

5. Don’t use irrelevant or repetitive hashtags

It might be tempting to simply copy and paste the same long list of hashtags on every post, but don’t do it. Instagram’s community guidelines clearly state that “posting repetitive comments or content” is not okay. If you use the same hashtags for every post, your content will be penalized by the algorithm.

When you create a post, only use hashtags that make sense. If you tag a post with #wanderlust, for example, your content must be something globetrotters will want to comment on, like, and share.

It’s not about getting seen by a lot of people, it’s about getting seen by the right people. That’s how hashtags lead to higher engagement and more followers. Pick and choose the right keywords for each post individually.

6. Make sure that hashtag means what you think it means

Hashtags are often a string of words stuck together. That can create some problems when it’s not clear where one word ends and the next begins.

One of the worst examples of this was the #susanalbumparty fiasco from way back in 2012. It was a launch celebration hashtag for Susan Boyle’s new album. But read it slowly and you might pick up some words in the middle that clearly make the hashtag a bit… problematic.

Amazon played with this kind of hashtag mistake to promote Top Gear. This was done on purpose, but it would be an easy mistake to combine a possessive “s” and the word “hit” by accident.

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A post shared by Mathew chronic (@clarkson_and_memes)

Brands sometimes also are too keen to hop onto a trending hashtag without fully understanding the context. When the context is challenging, this can create a PR disaster for the brand.

And sometimes a brand just doesn’t check to see if a hashtag is already in use before creating a whole campaign. Burger King was guilty of this back in 2013, when they used the hashtag #WTFF to mean “What The French Fry.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by #WTFF (@wtff2013)

Since you already know what WTF stands for, you can probably guess why this was a problem.

7. Save hashtags for future use

If you often use the same hashtags, you can save them in a note to reduce time typing them in over and over.

Wait, didn’t we just tell you not to use the same hashtags on every post? It’s true—you should not overuse the same set of hashtags. That said, it is still really useful to have a list of hashtags relevant to the various kinds of content you post. You could even create separate lists of hashtags relevant to the different types of posts you create.

Just create a list of hashtags in your notes app, ready to add to your posts.

You can then pick and choose a few hashtags to use each time, rather than having to remember the hashtags or search for new ones for each post. This also gives you the time to check out what kind of content is already being posted for these hashtags, so you don’t make one of the mistakes mentioned above.

Just remember that every one of the Instagram hashtags you use on a post must fit with the content and should not be too repetitive. Don’t copy and paste your whole saved list onto every post.

Manage your entire Instagram presence and save time with Hootsuite. Schedule posts and Stories, find the best hashtags, easily engage the audience, measure performance, and more. Try it free today.

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Hashtags for Instagram promotion

Instagram hashtags are a simple and affordable method of free promotion. They work similarly to keywords in Google or Yandex, that is, they help users navigate to the content they are interested in, and they allow a brand or blogger to increase coverage and attract a new audience.

Why do we need hashtags

Do hashtags still work on Instagram

How to choose the right hashtags

How to make hidden hashtags

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Why do we need hashtags

Initially, hashtags were invented to make it easier for users to find the information they need. Now the possibilities of tags have expanded. Hashtags make it easy to group content into topics and categories. Stores using navigation hashtags can place different categories of goods to make it easier for customers to navigate the assortment. An example of a brand navigation hashtag: #faberlic_discounts or #faberlic_flavors. nine0003

Unique hashtags are also used during sweepstakes, sales or marathons, so that participants and anyone who is interested can follow the progress of the event.

Do Instagram hashtags still work? For example, the #travel hashtag has over 600 million posts. It is placed on travel, or simply laying out beautiful nature. Among the huge amount of published content under this hashtag, your post will simply get lost and will not be of any use.

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In order for hashtags to work, namely to increase reach, bring in new subscribers or customers, they must match the subject of the profile and the published content. The more accurate your tags are, the more likely you are to be found by potential customers. For commercial accounts on Instagram, it is better to choose medium-frequency and low-frequency hashtags. They are more specific and designed for a narrow target audience. For example, instead of the general hashtag #renovation of apartments (about 3 million posts, that is, a high-frequency query), it is better to choose #renovation of apartments insochi (about 10,000 posts, that is, a medium-frequency query). The more you specify the request (add a city, district, specify a service), the less competitors you have for this hashtag. Besides mid- and low-frequency tags are the most converting - they are followed by people who know exactly what they want.

How to choose the right hashtags for Instagram

The selection of tags requires a competent approach and analysis so that potential customers and subscribers can find you and your offer.

Research your competitors' accounts

One of the easiest ways to find the right tags is to look at your competitors and related accounts by topic/audience interests. In order not to manually analyze each post, add a competitive account to LiveDune and go to the Posts tab - the Hashtags table. All the tags that were posted in the account will be collected here - the larger the font, the more often the hashtag was used. Conveniently, hashtags are taken into account both from the text of the post and from the comments under the post. Click on the hashtag you are interested in - a page on Instagram will open, where you can see its frequency. It is convenient not to drive in the hashtag manually. nine0009

Search for hashtags by keywords

In the Instagram app, click on the magnifying glass icon and enter a keyword/phrase that relates to your niche or published content in the search box, then go to the "Tags" tab. The search result will show all popular hashtags and their frequency. Try to choose also mid-low frequency hashtags, for this, specify the phrase.

You can also search for key phrases in Yandex Wordstat, it's convenient that in the service you can immediately filter requests for a specific region . Additionally, Wordstat will return related queries that your potential customers have requested, which makes it easier to select future hashtags. After you create a list of requests, go to Instagram and check their frequency. Select low-frequency ones and use them in your posts.

Avoid banned hashtags

To avoid being blocked or shadowbanned by Instagram, avoid using banned hashtags - anything related to violence, slander, pornography, drugs, firearms dealings, and organized hate groups crime and terrorism. nine0003

Temporarily or permanently, Instagram blocks certain tags from appearing in search results. To check if you're accidentally using a banned hashtag, just type the word into the search bar and see the result.

How to make hidden hashtags

To focus on the text of the post, hashtags can be placed in the comments, and not added to the post itself. They work on the same principle. N There is another life hack that will allow you to completely hide hashtags. nine0009

  • Write any comment to your post.
  • Add a reply to this comment. Write hashtags in it.
  • Delete the first comment. The second comment will be automatically hidden, but the hashtags will still work, i.e. Your post will show up with the hashtag you entered.

This method has one drawback - you will not be able to view and edit hidden hashtags on Instagram. I'll have to delete the post and start over again. Properly selected hashtags can attract a new audience and increase desired coverage on Instagram. But hashtags are not the only free way to promote. We described all promotion methods in the article “How to promote an account on Instagram for free”. nine0009

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Correct hashtags for Instagram promotion.


The most common misconception when promoting your Instagram is to find and post popular hashtags, instead of those that match the photo and are able to interest users. This can be judged by the activity of search queries, such as: " popular instagram hashtags "and" most popular hashtags on instagram ". hashtag user can like or go to your page.This dependence can be displayed using a graph.0196 (point A on the chart) is only a couple of seconds, because an avalanche of photographs is published on it. According to my latest measurements, from 500 to 1000 photos are fasted per minute on the #love hashtag, and the volume of published photos on this hashtag is approaching a billion. But, for example, the hashtag #B2Cgram can live forever until it becomes popular, but the probability that a user will follow this hash throughout the day or even a week is very small (point C on the chart), because. The hashtag is new and unknown to anyone. nine0003

So it turns out that these two extremes (points A and C) are not suitable for a typical Instagram promotion, except for those cases when you already have 30,000, 90,000 or even more subscribers. For promoted accounts, completely different tactics are needed. In the meantime, you have 1800 - 900 subscribers or even less, then you need to be especially careful in choosing hashtags for each new photo, and these hashtags are located at point B, or more precisely in the area of ​​​​points B1, B2 and B3 on the chart below. nine0003

Collecting these hashtags is not difficult, for starters, just go through the users who post the same photos as you, for example, let it be the hashtag #landscape and see what hashtags people use on the topic of landscape. Landscapes include photographs that depict sunrise or sunset, snowy mountains or a forest glade, green meadows or a lifeless desert - all this is a landscape, but in different thematic groups. Pay attention to what tags are used, if the photo shows water (ocean, sea, lake, river), there will definitely be a hashing word _water_, if there are huge clouds and a beautiful sky, then words such as: _sky_, _cloudscape_ etc. nine0003

To the collected list of hashes, it remains to add the country and place where the photo was taken, as well as special hashtags of various thematic contests, so that you get a pretty decent hash array. Today, it is allowed to place a set of 30 hashtags under a photo on instagram, i.e. not 2 or 3, but as many as 30, so that there is where to turn around! True, there are some tricks that allow you to publish more hashtags, but these are tricks that can only be learned in a private conversation :) So, you have collected a certain number of hashtags, for example 50 or 130, and now you need to systematize them and determine them graphics, in order to end up with just such a plate that I make in Excel. nine0003

What do you need? And to solve such a problem, you absolutely need a free and most useful service for promotion on instagram - http://websta. me/. On this resource, you can collect lists of competitors, and see the most popular hashtags on Instagram, and at the same time get complete statistics on your list of hashtags and expand the hashtag list itself through Tag Search Results.

Then it’s a matter of technology, sort all hashtags by numerical values ​​in descending order, mark up with a color or put a label in front of each (water, sunrise, sunset, forest), follow the links of each hashtag and visually control the output of images so that there are not too many spam photos that do not correspond to the topic, it is better to delete such hashtags, as a result you will get a ready-made hash array of 100-500 pieces in size. Now you can already work with this data to post this photo on Instagram. nine0003

Before publishing another photo, use filters to "turn off" all "clouds", all "water", all "sunrises" and "sunsets" and leave the classic hashtags (brown text color), mixed (black color) and competitive ( green), those that are most suitable for the new published photo.

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