A comprehensive guide to Instagram hashtags to grow your brand.

Instagram hashtags are all over the place yet does your brand realize how to utilize hashtags on Instagram to get the most out of them?

Hashtags probably won’t appear as a very important need on a surface, however, they stay one of the most significant parts of promoting your Instagram business.

Nowadays, Instagram hashtags are not just categorizing your content and make it discoverable by users, but they are a compelling method to get more followers, increase engagement and extend reach and brand mindfulness.

When you begin digging into utilizing hashtags on Instagram, you’ll most likely run into a lot of questions: Do you know which hashtags are driving followers to your page? What are the most well-known tags in your industry? What number of hashtags on Instagram do you add on a typical post?

Why use Instagram hashtags, anyway?

In case you’re absolutely new to Instagram, you may not “get” what hashtags do precisely or see what the hype is about. Below are some key reasons why hashtags deserve your undivided attention.

1. Hashtags make your content easier to find.
2. Hashtags encourage audience interactions.
3. Hashtags can clue you in on industry trends.

Consistently following tags can help you keep a close eye on competitors as well as what people are saying about your own brand.

What type of hashtags to use for Instagram?

Since we’ve highlighted why hashtags matter, it’s important to discuss coming up a publishing strategy.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer here, but here are some ideas to help serve as a starting point.

1. Community and niche-specific hashtags:

The best hashtags are the ones that communicate in your customer’s language.

Basically, these are tags that are mainstream enough that they’ll really get used yet aren’t well known to the point that your posts will get lost in the crowd.

For instance, there are huge amounts of beauty-related hashtags, such as #goldenhair or #mermaidhair that address a more specific crowd than just #beauty.

Similarly, a fitness brand with a predominantly female segment may discover more accomplishment with tags identified with #femalefitness as compared to #fitness by itself.

2. Branded hashtags:

Ideal for promoting your Instagram and empowering user-generated content, branded hashtags are absolutely significant. They don’t really need to be rocket science or a brain buzzer taking hours. Here are a few thoughts for common branded hashtag types and varieties you can think of yourself.

• Brand name hashtags (#TeesforBizz)
• Brand-specific slogans (#neverstopexploring)
• Brand name variations (#Myshirts or #Mytees)

3. General hashtags on Instagram

As noted, any sort of tag will instantly increase your user engagement as compared to when you use none. That’s why general hashtags such as #beauty are fair game, too.

Some popular ones are: #love #instagood #photooftheday #fashion #Beautiful #picoftheday #art #happy #photography #instagram.

Best practices for the use of Instagram hashtags

With a better understanding of why and what, let’s put the pieces together and put your hashtag strategy into action. Here are some notable practices to keep in the back of your mind before you start using hashtags on your Instagram.

1. How many hashtags should you use on Instagram?

You can use up to 30 Instagram hashtags on any given post. This doesn’t mean that you should use all of them. In fact, adding more hashtags looks spammy and unreadable just like keyword-stuffed web content.

So what’s considered as optimal? Research suggests, top-performing posts tend to follow the rule of “less is more.” Typically we see brands incorporate between two to five, plus or minus. This gives brands some squirm room dependent on their captions and what terms they’re attempting to target.

For example, Dyson manages to include five tags on this post without feeling like overkill.

The takeaway here? Rather than to fixate on the “right” number of hashtags, think “less is more” and be willing to experiment new tags. Discover your brand’s sweet spot and test different tags until you find your top-performing tags. Don’t depend on what others are using, try your own and see what works out.

2. Including hashtags in your first comment.

To increase your reach, engagement and use more tags on your post without crowding the caption of your post, it is a great practice to include hashtags in the first comment of your post.

Have a look at how Fender does it!

Using this will enhance the readability of your post and users will tend to engage more.

3. Encourage others to use your hashtags.

If you want people to use your brand hashtag, you’re going to have to ask them to.

In addition to your Instagram bio, make sure to promote your hashtag throughout your marketing campaigns. This includes on-site and via email and Instagram-specific newsletter.

4. Target trending topic.

Utilizing hashtags that are as of now trending is a savvy strategy to develop your audience. There are two different ways to approach this strategy:

1. Hold up until a hashtag identified with your industry is trending.

2. Use trending hashtags that aren’t directly identified with your industry.

The first tactic will give you more focused results. However, depending upon your industry, it may be uncommon that a topic identified with it becomes trending.

With the second tactic, you’re hopping on topics that are now trending yet might not have an immediate association with your brand. On the off chance that you go this route, you’ll need to stay with current events like occasions or special event since they’re simpler to tie back to your company.

5. Match your hashtags to the right photo

When you’re targeting frequently used hashtags, you need the photo that goes with your Instagram caption to stand out.

As we mentioned earlier, the hashtags you use should be relevant to the photo you’re posting. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth repeating.

Remember: even though adding hashtags in your captions can make your posts easier to discover, the image is what will pull in users.

6. Vary hashtags across your posts

Once you find popular hashtags that people engage with, it might be tempting to continue using those same hashtags in every post. However, eventually, you’ll need to add some more variation.

If you’ve been using the same hashtags for months, there’s a chance people already saw your content and ignored it. By adding in a little variation, you increase the chances to reach new people.

That’s why it’s so important to analyze and evaluate what hashtags work the best.

Bring together your Instagram hashtag strategy.

Knowing which hashtags to use and how to implement them is a good start.

But unless you’re tracking your insights, you’ll have no idea what’s working and what’s not.

You need to know which hashtags are your top performers so you can build around them. It takes time to pull everything together. So let’s go ahead and refresh.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

1. Using hashtags for Instagram makes your content more discoverable.

2. You don’t need to use 30 hashtags in every post!

3. Study your competitors and top influencers to find the best hashtags.

4. Make sure your hashtags are relevant to your brand and whatever you’re posting.

5. Use trending hashtags and tie them back to your company.

6. Familiarize yourself with Instagram lingo and general, “evergreen” hashtags.

7. Measure the performance of your posts and most engaged hashtags.