It’s common knowledge that using hashtags can improve and increase the visibility of your content on social media. Using hashtags on Instagram might help your content to be discovered by a wider audience than just the people who already follow you. You group your content with other similar content on social media when you use the # symbol before a word or phrase. Therefore, post-exposure increases when you use relevant hashtags in your captions and comment sections. But how to find the best and most relevant hashtags for your business? This blog post steps in to save you time on research! Within, we delve into the advantages of hashtags, methods for generating them, and the most effective practices for their use.
Hashtags serve as an excellent tool for individuals interested in specific topics to discover and follow more accounts. They enable you to explore all related posts in one place, making it easier to find and connect with similar interests.
This means that people searching for your brand will find your posts if you use the most accurate and relevant hashtags. The increased visibility and discovery that hashtags provide is the main reason for their use. Additionally, as an example of support for the brand, your audience may share their experiences with your goods or services by using branded hashtags. Incorporating hashtags significantly boosts overall brand visibility. On the search results page, you can see more posts that are related just by clicking on one of the posts.
Using branded hashtags and promoting their use turns them into an additional channel for interaction. Branded hashtags serve as a virtual gateway, creating an interconnected web of content that users can easily navigate. When users click on a branded hashtag, they’re transported to a collection of posts, stories, and conversations specifically tailored around that particular tag. This approach not only amplifies brand visibility but also fosters community engagement. Users become active participants, contributing their own perspectives, experiences, and creativity to the brand narrative. As this hashtag ecosystem thrives, it transforms into a dynamic hub where customers feel empowered to share, connect, and engage with like-minded individuals, fostering a sense of belonging within the brand’s community.
Moreover, the longevity of tagged feeds and story posts ensures a lasting imprint, allowing for ongoing discovery and interaction long after the initial post. Thus, integrating branded hashtags strategically isn’t merely about visibility—it’s about fostering a living, breathing community that continually evolves and engages with the brand’s story.
What digital presence do your competitors hold within your market? You can examine your social media share of voice with the help of hashtags. Your hashtags and those of your competitors will likely overlap, especially if you’re using both local and industry hashtags. With a competitor analysis, you can look into the share of voice, sentiment, and engagement of those posts. For content inspiration and ideas on areas where your brand could be lacking in comparison to rival content, you can also go through posts that contain your relevant hashtags.
Hashtags can assist you in conducting idea-generation research for content, much like they would for SEO keyword research. Let’s say you would like to contribute more to the #cleanbeauty hashtag. Given that the hashtag is used in over 6.3 million posts, that is quite difficult to achieve.
Nonetheless, you can view the top posts by using the top option on the search results page. Take inspiration from this location. What appears to be effective for similar brands? Is there a particular caption or style that’s popular right now? Similar to identifying secondary keywords for search engine optimization, exploring top posts can reveal less popular yet equally fitting hashtags for your audience.
These days, if you go shopping in any kind of shop, you almost certainly will run into a marketing campaign that uses a hashtag. Hashtags provide an easy approach to link digital and offline efforts, regardless of whether they want you to use a campaign-specific hashtag or their general brand hashtag.
Although it’s simple to use, the Sistrix hashtag generation tool offers limited usage with a free account. Before you have to pay for a premium account, you can receive 25 free queries every day. This is quite a lot, so you might be able to get by without upgrading.
To get a list of the top 30 hashtags related to your initial search, just type one or more hashtags into the text field and hit ‘enter’. Select the most relevant ones to include in your next post.
With the help of Keyword Tool, marketers can find keywords on many websites, including Instagram hashtags. You may even use some geolocation with this option to make sure you’re finding the most popular hashtags within specific regions. For local companies that exclusively serve clients in a particular area, this is a benefit. Additionally, you can choose the language in which hashtags appear.
With the free account, you will only get a list of hashtags without any information on how they are being used. To access detailed information on their performance, consider upgrading to a paid account.
With the help of Inflact, an AI-powered hashtag generator, you can generate hashtag concepts based on a term, image, or previously published Instagram posts. This can be helpful if you’re not even sure where to begin with a keyword search, or if you just want to see what suggestions the tool makes for your picture.
Following the search entry, the tool will provide you with hashtags from three categories:
The classifications are based on the frequency of usage of the hashtag. Additionally, the tool suggests how many hashtags to use in each category.
Inflact and Toolzu are comparable in terms of how you can begin hashtag research. To begin, enter your data (a keyword, URL, or photo) and click ‘Generate Hashtags’. Toolzu will calculate the number of posts that contain the hashtag and the potential difficulty of getting viewers to use it. In addition, the tool offers apps for iOS and Android smartphones, making it simple to look up hashtags while using a mobile device.
Display Purposes generates a list of hashtags from a given starting point. Enter a few hashtags in the text box to initiate the search. The suggested hashtags are scored for relevance and popularity. Additionally, Daily Purposes presents a tool that scans your profile to recommend hashtags aligned with your posted content—an incredibly valuable feature.
All Hashtag creates hashtags from a single keyword. Select if you want results for trending hashtags, top results, or random results. Opt for top results, random suggestions, or currently trending hashtags. Receive a list of the top 30 hashtags relevant to your query. The tool includes a “Copy” button for easy transfer of all 30 hashtags directly into your caption or comment. To ensure optimal interaction and follow best practices, keep the amount of hashtags you use in each post to a minimum.
Now that you’ve selected every hashtag you’ll use, you can launch your new social media campaign. What comes next? Checking how all of these hashtags are serving you. It’s crucial to monitor your hashtag analytics to make sure the ones you’re using are helping you perform better. If not, it might be necessary to adjust this and use more tailored hashtags.
You’ll become aware of when you get more interaction or spam comments when you start using the same hashtags. Choosing a social media solution that provides Instagram hashtag statistics might be helpful to ensure you’re using the appropriate hashtags for your needs. Some tools that offer hashtag tracking are Mentionlytics and Keyhole. By analyzing your statistics, you might find that the hashtags you frequently use aren’t the ones generating the most positive responses from people.
How many hashtags should you use? It’s a bit of a puzzle, as the answer can swing dramatically. If you’re placing them in your caption, stick to 3 to 5—following Instagram’s guidelines. Should you opt for the first comment, going up to the full 30 hashtags is acceptable. However, this doesn’t mean you should use 30 hashtags for each post, which brings us to our next tip.
A caption with too many hashtags can take up too much space and look messy. Reduce the number of hashtags in your captions and move them to a comment if necessary. This assures an enjoyable user experience in addition to maintaining the aesthetic cleanliness of your captions. Your content becomes more inviting and approachable for your audience when it is presented in an organized and attractive way. This minor but significant tweak adds to a sophisticated and captivating social media approach, increasing the overall success of your hashtag usage.
Finding the ideal hashtags for your brand may be done in a few different ways. The simplest and first step is to pay attention to the hashtags influencers and accounts you already follow use. Another approach is to start coming up with ideas and enter them into the Instagram search bar. This way, related hashtags will appear as you write. Using the hashtag #coffee in the example below may lead to more spam comments than you would desire. Instead, find additional niche results that are relevant to your audience by scrolling down further in the results.
You may follow search results for any hashtag on Instagram. When you do this, these posts, as well as all the other posts from the accounts you follow, show up in your feed. This helps you stay on top of the industry or community hashtags, so it’s a useful strategy to adopt. However, it doesn’t guarantee that every post will surface in your feed. Thus, it shouldn’t substitute for the use of branded hashtags.
Once you’ve compiled your list of branded hashtags, ensure their consistent use in every relevant post. Branded hashtags can usually be found in a brand’s Instagram bio, often accompanied by a call-to-action encouraging their use.
For instance, Dominos features their branded hashtag #DominosDelivers in their IG bio. This allows customers to incorporate the hashtag when posting about the brand. This practice facilitates easy discovery for Dominos to share those images on their own feed.
Break up your hashtags into relevant groups rather than using the same ones for every post that you copy and paste. For instance, the hashtags for your educational postings may differ from those for those announcing new products. Maintain distinct lists on hand for the many kinds of content pillars you publish, rather than creating a new list for every post, this will not only save you time but also help you stay relevant.
Although Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours, you should still apply hashtags to them. These also appear in the search results and are a simple means of attracting additional interested followers. Do you use too many hashtags in your stories? Type your text as usual, then cover it up with a sticker or GIF.
Leveraging hashtags on Instagram offers brands numerous advantages, including improved brand awareness, increased engagement, and valuable insights for competitor analysis. To navigate the world of hashtags effectively, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the several available types of hashtags and stick to recommended best practices before incorporating them into your social media strategy.
Read further: News, ecommerce, instagram
