How to use Instagram hashtags for business : A Guide for Marketers
The world has made the switch to Instagram a while ago. The flurry of pictures, videos, reels, dances, and trends has been unstoppable ever since. Around a Billion people are currently using Instagram and even though that is a massive number, honestly, no one is surprised. Instagram has a massive following and everyone can see that. And with these many eyes stuck to the screen because of the app, it’s a haven for anyone looking to promote and expand their businesses online.
Instagram Organic growth is super important for anyone who wants to grow their Instagram accounts and boost their visibility on the platform. What’s organic growth? It’s basically trying to be more and more visible and have a greater reach without using promotional tools and/or paying money. Sounds simple? It’s not entirely. Because organic growth has a lot of check points to clear and it also takes time and sincere investment. One of the most important factor here being consistency.
Being consistent is key to boosting your organic growth. Obviously, it also involves creating great content rapidly that people enjoy. But most importantly, engaging people through content and interactions also takes the cake. Sounds like a lot? Don’t worry, lots of social media platforms also understand the value of organic growth. That’s why they have a hidden tool for you to use. It’s called Hashtags! It’s not really hidden but only a few can really use its true value.
We’ll make you a master of Instagram hashtags through this guide. Let’s get into it.
What is a Hashtag?
They are basically units of categorization. Any word, letter, number, and, so on preceded by the # symbol becomes a hashtag. They’re meant to give discoverability a huge swing by putting things tagged in the same way in the same place. You can click a hashtag and find all the other posts and content that is somewhat the same way. This organizational facet of Instagram is really helpful to find content and also get inspired from it. So, how do we use them well?
1. Create Your Own
The truth is, you can probably find millions of hashtags on Instagram from just spending like an hour looking for them. However, if you’re looking to really build your brand, one of the best things you can do is create a single hashtag of your own and use it in your related posts. Why is this really good? Because this particular hashtag will be unique to you and it will only lead people to your posts or posts that are related to your business. The important step here is to popularize your hashtag after using it.
You can do this by asking people questions, hosting small or big giveaways, giving out Instagram challenges, and so on. And every time you do this, you can ask people to use the hashtag in their posts giving you a lot of eyes every time someone does. This is one of the best ways to utilize hashtags.
2. Study Insights
The insights page is a great tool available to make things really easy to work with. How? Every time your post reaches people, it records how exactly it reached them. One of those recorded features is hashtag. So this becomes a small trial and error method. See what hashtags are working for you, which ones are reaching more people and then you know what to use and what to discard.
3. Get the number right
Instagram allows you to use a total of 30 hashtags. But only because you can, doesn’t always mean you should. Many would say that there’s a general consensus to use about 12 hashtags and no more. The best number to keep in mind is 10. Use total of ten hashtags for your posts and about 2 for your stories.
This would focus your post better. Imagine being scattered across 25 different sort of hashtags compared to being focused specifically on the right hashtags that relate to your post quite directly. This is all about building the right audience for the future. Especially for new businesses, it’s vital to remain sharply focused on your subject and use hashtags accordingly.
4. Recency
The hashtag feed sorts things based on recency. That is, how recent a tagged post was uploaded. Many make the mistakes of forgetting to use the hashtags right when they upload the post. This could be really bad for your post since it won’t appear in the most recent section of the hashtags feed. Always remember to include hashtags right when you’re writing captions.
5. Relevance
And finally, make sure your hashtag is relevant to your post. You can’t possible upload a picture of a beautiful burger with French fries and tag it #OOTD (Outfit Of The Day,) that makes no sense and even if it shows up in the section, it will be whisked away just as quickly.
It may seem like a way of attracting attention from different facets but really, people looking for different posts in the particular hashtag would rather not look at something that’s irrelevant. Let alone try to explore your page. If you’re posting a burger, say #food, this hashtag has millions of people stuck to their explore feed. Stay relevant!
Conclusion:
In conclusion, this was the guide you needed to ace your hashtag game on Instagram. Remember to keep your Instagram posting schedule consistent and your content engaging. These are also some very important things that’ll help you grow organically on instagram and at a rapid pace.
