What Tactics and Tips Work With Instagram’s Changing Hashtag Policy
TL;DR Version
Include 3-5 location-based, branded, industry-based, community focused, or descriptive hashtags in your caption or comments section and see how your numbers increase.
Instagram hashtags are used to label and categorize your content and suggest it to users it thinks will have a high interest in your posts. They fuel the search results on the Instagram Explore Page and they’re used as a reference for Instagram’s algorithm.
One of the best ways to get discovered by new audiences on this platform is by using relevant, targeted hashtags, along with keywords. Using the right hashtags can put you in front of your target audience, whether they’ve connected with you in the past or not. They also help you gain more engagement, more followers, and more customers for your brand and business, overall.
Using Instagram Hashtags
Instagram hashtags can be used for many things like community building, sourcing User Generated Content (UGC), and running campaigns.
How many hashtags should I use?
Well, Instagram allows the use of up to 30 hashtags, but it’s recommended to only use 3-5 hashtags.
The reason we recommend this amount is because Instagram needs to be able to categorize content into the Explore Page and the Reels tab, and that becomes harder to do when you incorporate a bunch of hashtags that aren’t relevant and that can make your content look messy or like spam.
Should I be using hashtags in my caption or in the comments section? Using hashtags in your captions or your comments sections is truly up to you.
The effectiveness of this strategy is different for each platform. Instagram hashtags in your comments section can potentially help you reach a broader audience because the hashtags are still linked to your post. Instagram’s algorithm considers them regardless if their placed in the comments or in the caption.
What hashtags should I be using?
There are five main types of hashtags to think of when it comes to deciding what hashtags to use.
1. Location-based hashtags
These types of hashtags allow you to reach people around the world by adding a location in hashtag form.
2. Branded hashtags
Branded hashtags are unique hashtags that your company created to promote itself on social media. This hashtag can encourage user-generated content, promote events, promote specific campaigns, etc.
3. Industry hashtags
Industry-based hashtags speak for themselves. They’re hashtags related to a specific industry, profession, or clients that your business serves.
4. Community-focused hashtags
These hashtags can be used to help create a community around your brand, encourage customer loyalty, and help make customers feel like a member of your brand community.
5. Descriptive hashtags
These hashtags are pretty self-explanatory. They describe the content that you’re posting about.
Instagram’s Explore Page is a good place to help you find trending hashtags. You can do this by going to the search bar on Instagram’s Explore Page and searching for keywords that are relevant to your topic or brand.
Hashtags that have millions of posts will drown out your content, and hashtags that only have a few hundred posts means no one is really searching for that topic, so aim for a volume of 10k-200k posts for hashtags. Using the correct hashtags will increase the likelihood of likes and comments.
December 2024 Hashtag Update!
In December 2024 Instagram will remove the option to follow hashtags as a way to try to get rid of spammers who target trending hashtags with irrelevant content.
The update isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because nowadays, social media algorithms are better at understanding the context of your video, image, caption, and what users are engaging with.
This enables the algorithm to continue showing people more of what they like based on that information.
Going forward, users and/or business will really have to post good quality content with strong, relevant captions that will reach the audience that they’re targeting, instead of just relying on hashtags.
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