Most people simply want a lot of followers on Instagram. If that’s you, then this post will NOT be of much help! If you’re actually trying to grow a brand, business or something of value then you’ve come to the right place! Sit back, grab that cup of coffee and let’s talk about Instagram Hashtags!
How many followers an account has doesn’t matter too much anymore on most social media platforms. Instead, what’s truly important is what we call engagement. Engagement is a term we use to simply describe how much interaction a post receives on any given platform. For Instagram, this would be in the form of likes and comments. If we are receiving plenty of likes and more importantly comments we know that people are actually looking at the content we are sharing. You can have 100,000 followers on Instagram, but if you’re not receiving any engagement, that number is meaningless.
Once you understand that, the first thing you’ll do is probably get rid of that Instagram Bot you’ve been using. After that, you’ll probably sit there for a couple hours trying to figure out what the hell to do now that you actually have to do some work! Don’t worry, we’ll make it as painless as possible!
Instagram Hashtags are the driving force behind Instagram and believe it or not they actually work quite well, the issue is…spammers! Including you, you little hoe! It’s the age-old saying, “Marketers ruin everything!” Truth be told, we do! 🙂 Butttttttt….we can do a better job and become more effective!
Instagram Hashtags are the main way people find the content they are interested in outside of their friends’ posts. Want to see some pictures of some cute kittens? Simply search the hashtag #babykittens and you’ll be set to waste the next hour of your life scrolling through a feed of kittens that will melt your heart! <3
The issue is marketers find out what the top hashtags being used in different niches are and are quick to flood (Spam) that hashtag on the next 1000 quotes about baby kittens to try to get more people to follow them. So what can you do? Well, first stop doing what everyone else is doing and using only those top spammy hashtags! How do you know which ones are spammy? Well, I promise it’s not a very difficult task and only takes a minute. You simply search for the hashtag yourself on Instagram. Trust me, you’ll know if one’s spammy, especially since you’re a marketer! 😉
Typically what I like to look for are tags that have been used between 50,000 and 250,000 times. When you do a search the results will show a number telling you how many times it’s been used which makes it pretty easy! Like I said, just a little bit of work and nothing too difficult!
The best way to improve your hashtag game is to create your own list of hashtags for the type of content you post. These should be relevant to the picture and not just generic hashtags that would be considered spammy. Of course, you’ll have to update these keywords once in a while to make sure you keep only using hashtags that between that 50,000 and 250,000 range. Keeping them updated isn’t that difficult as long as you keep up on it and honestly, once you have a system in place it takes very little time.
Outside of selecting the right hashtags you also want to make sure you are using the most hashtags allowed by Instagram. At the time of writing this blog post, that limit is up to 30 hashtags per post. You should use 30 hashtags EVERY SINGLE TIME you post! Why would you waste out on the ability for your content to get the most eyes possible? Oh…you don’t want it to look spammy? While marketers tend to be assholes ruining everything we do come up with some clever ideas sometimes. One popular method I’ve seen and the way that I personally do it is like this…First, use 2-5 hashtags within your actual caption of the content you’re posting. Secondly, add the remaining hashtags as a comment to your post with chars above them to bring them down some….for example.
…#babygiraffes #babykittens #babypenquins#whydoihavebabiesonthebrain
By adding a couple of lines with a single period above your hashtags in the comment you’ll take advantage of the way Instagram takes care of long comments. If a comment is more than a couple lines, Instagram automatically adds a See More link and shortens how much of your comment it shows unless someone was to click on the link! This makes it extremely useful for hiding all those additional hashtags and allowing your content to look more natural and appealing instead of spammy.
As you can see the trick to Instagram isn’t really a trick at all. Just use the platform how it was designed but make sure you are getting the most out of what you are doing. Besides, the only people following you if you’re using the spammy hashtags are spammers. Make better friends! <3