Hashtag hell to hashtag heaven with 5 easy tips

You may currently be living in hashtag hell not knowing whether you should be adding 5, keeping them the same, going for the top used ones or not even know what one is. If it’s the latter then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog and you need more help! Or you may well be living in hashtag heaven and know exactly what you’re doing.

When used correctly, Instagram hashtags can help you grow your reach, get more engagement, and attract more followers.

A post with at least one Instagram hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag. So it really is worth creating a hashtag strategy for your brand if you want to grow your account.

Using relevant, targeted hashtags on your posts and stories is still one of the best ways to get discovered by new audiences on Instagram. And this can translate into more engagement, more followers, and more customers for your business.

Beautiful imagery by We Are the Luminous

Our top 5 tips to get your hashtag strategy underway

1. Think about location – if you supply locally or are a venue in a specific location you may use #chichester #westsussex in all posts as it’s always relevant. If you’re a national business in several cities, you may include a few of these depending on the post and if it’s relevant to all sites.

2. Campaign led – think about whether your post relates to a campaign led hashtag such as #blackfriday #christmas2020. They may be seasonal or supporting a movement such as #blacklivesmatter, so if they are relevant to your post and brand then include them. You can also use your own to engage with others posting about the same topic and become a community for you all to engage in.

3. Add a branded hashtag – this is a hashtag that’s unique to your company when using Instagram for business, one of our clients has multiple pubs and many of them use #youngspubs so we can all be involved in what’s happening within the pubs.

4. Research the best hashtags for your account – be strategic. While the most popular hashtags on Instagram have been used millions of times, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get a lot of engagement by adding #dogsofinstagram to your post about a coffee or even if it is a dog as it’s saturated and millions of people use it. Instead of using the most popular Instagram hashtags, it’s better to find and use hashtags that are smaller, more niche, and have an engaged audience that’s relevant to your industry.

Where to find the best hashtags to use?

Later has a search function and you can add to your posts as you schedule them. It also gives you a grid preview so you can see what your posts look like.
Our favourite is Bigbangram which allows you to search for keywords relating to your post and copy hashtags are from hard-easy in terms of how likely they are to be viewed in Instagram. suggestions of others you can use.

5. Track success and use social analytics to see what performs best for your brand.

A question we often get asked is how many hashtags should people use per post?