With all the changes that Instagram makes {and is still making regularly} a lot of people are wondering if hashtags are still worth the effort? Well, I am here to provide all the information I can, and you can decide how and when to use Instagram hashtags for followers.

How to Use Instagram Hashtags for Followers

For Instagram Beginners – Instagram hashtags are like “google” for IG. You go to the search box and type in #{whatever you want to search} and Instgram will generate the posts that have used that hashtag. Say for example you want to plan a trip to Boston and you are wondering what people in Boston are doing – head to the search box, type in “Boston”, click on the “tags” tab, and it will show you all the Instagram hashtags that are popular and relate to Boston for you to search.  Also, I should note, this only works if your Instagram account is public.

First let’s explore how to use Instagram Hashtags:

1. You are allowed 30 hashtags per post (this includes in the comments AND your caption) while you can use 5-10 hashtags in your caption, that means you can only add 20-25 in your comments – 30. total. that’s it. And only 10 in an IG Story!
2. Putting them in your caption vs putting them in your comments? Some people swear by one or the other, and I’ve tried both and I haven’t seen any difference. Honestly it’s whatever you prefer. I put them in the comments so they get hidden and don’t look as spammy. You can put them in your caption without being spammy by writing your caption and then creating line breaks. You can do this by using emojis, dots, or periods {.} and hitting return 7-10 times and then add your hashtags at the very bottom of the caption
3. You can’t just use the same set of hashtags over and over again, IG does not like that. AND the hashtags have to be relevant to the photo – more on this later…

While some big time influencers are no longer using hashtags {they can be time consuming}, Instagram hashtags are still great for being found and growing your audience. For example if I create a restaurant guide for a New England town I would want to use hashtags that refer to #foodies, or #foodieguides, and also reference that town. This helps anyone going to that town and looking for dinner options to easily find me!

A post with at least one Instagram Hashtag gets over 12% MORE engagement than posts without.

Worried you won’t be able to find enough hashtags to use for different pictures? Trust me, there are many different kinds of hashtags. Let’s discuss:

Community Hashtags –

These types of hashtags indicate your product or service, your niche, special events or seasons, locations, phrases relevant to what you do, and even emojis! You can even create your own community hashtag to cultivate more community around your brand. Typically I would use : #ShannonBringsJoy #MyNewEngland #NewEnglandPhotogaphy #FineArtPrints #Boston etc etc.

Branded and Campaign Hashtags:

These hashtags can refer to brands in your photo, and brands that you work with that want you to use specific hashtags they created. Using these hashtags is also a great way to engage with people that are interested in the same things you are.

Instagram Hashtag Research

How to find hashtags that are related to your content? The best way to start is to see what hashtags your audience is using, or Instagram Influencers. Once you see a hashtag you like you click on that hashtag and it will show you posts that used that hashtag. It will ALSO show you how many posts used the hashtag – for instance in the picture below you can see that beacon hill has 242k posts that used #beaconhill. And just below that you get a horizontal list of other hashtags that are relevant to the topic you are looking for. You can scroll through those hashtags to see which ones pertain to you and start building a hashtag library.

The more niche the hashtag the higher your chances are at getting found. For example: if you were to include the hashtag #instalikes – that hashtag is 1. completely irrelevant to anything and 2. it has 17.3 million posts. The odds of people seeing your post for that hashtag is very low. Where as you use hashtags that have under 10k posts you have a much better chance at getting noticed in the hashtag search.

My advice: try to use small {but not too small} hashtags so you are noticed, and then have 1-5 hashtags of medium sized 100k-500k, then 1-2 larger hashtags.

Another way you can be discovered when you use hashtags is if people follow the hashtag you use. You now have the ability to follow hashtags {I follow mainly New England + Photography Hashtags}, so when I am scrolling through my feed a picture from the hashtags I follow will show in my feed. It helps me discover people with similar interests without picking through all the pictures when I search for a hashtag.

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How to Organize Your Hashtags

While there are many ways to organize + save your hashtags, I have found it easiest to do hashtag research on my desktop, and then save hashtag collections in my Notes App. That way when I go to post to IG on my phone I can go to my Notes App, and simply copy + paste to IG.

But there are also Apps that help with saving groups of hashtags if you use them – Later looks to have a great planning tool and hashtag help, and Planoly. I use Planoly because I love that I can use my desktop to plan my grid layout, write captions + hashtags, and plan my week out. Planoly has an option to save your hashtag collections right in the app, making it as easy as the click of a button.

Things to remember:

If you use the same collection on every post IG will consider it spam. Keep multiple hashtag collections.

Hashtags are like fashion, they go in and out of style, try to keep up-to-date with the trending hashtags.

There are some hashtags that are considered to be banned hashtags. People decided to use certain hashtags to show inappropriate posts and now IG won’t show those posts with the banned hashtags. You can google and see which are banned, and make your own judgements.

Hope this helps with your Hashtag Strategy and leave any questions in the comments below!

If you enjoyed Are Instagram Hashtags Still Relevant then check out these other articles full of {actually useful} informations to help you Find Joy in Social Media!

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Do you have any tips on using Instagram Hashtags for Followers? Let me know in a comment below!