You probably have noticed by now that hashtags are everywhere not only on Instagram but on different social media platforms as well. If your brand hasn’t included the hashtags yet in your social media marketing campaign, then you’re missing a lot of opportunities, especially when it comes to discoverability.
Hashtags are one of the essential things you need to include in your marketing strategy to develop a strong social media presence. However, without the proper knowledge and understanding of hashtags and how they work, then they would only give a little boost to your visibility.
Fortunately, in this article, we have provided everything you need to know about hashtags and how it can improve your visibility, especially on Instagram.
Why use Instagram Hashtags?
It makes your content easier to find.
Hashtags are perfect tools in making your Instagram content discoverable not only to everyone but, more importantly, to your target audience. Instagram users use hashtags whenever they look for something that interests them. Hashtags are pretty similar to keywords for a search engine. It allows your brand to get closer and visible to your target audience.
If you don’t have an idea of what should be the hashtags your brand is using, you can use some online hashtag generation tool. This tool can provide you with the most current, popular, and trending hashtags that are highly relevant to your niche. You can use these hashtags to make your content discoverable on Instagram.
It encourages audience interactions.
Now that you have included popular hashtags in your content, expect an increase in engagement since hashtags are pretty good in making a post highly visible to people. This is the reason why a lot of brands are using hashtags to increase brand awareness and get more engagement.
However, one should take note that while hashtags bring lots of people to your content, they won’t engage immediately on your posts unless you’re providing a high-quality one. No matter how effective hashtags are, people will certainly not engage in lousy and generic content. So to effectively encourage interactions, make sure to provide high-quality content to your audience.
How to use Hashtags to Increase Visibility on Instagram
Industry-specific hashtags
While there are lots of popular and trending hashtags to choose from, what you need are the ones that speak your target audience language. For example, instead of using a generic hashtag ‘#fitness’ yet you intend to target just one gender, then you might want to use #femalefitness or #malefitness. With this, your post will be visible only to your preferred audience.
Branded hashtags
Not only that, you can use trending hashtags freely, but you can also create your own hashtags as well called branded hashtags.
Branded hashtags are beneficial, especially when creating a brand awareness campaign. Branded hashtags are also very effective when you are hosting an Instagram contest since it encourages user-generated content. Branded hashtags increase your brand’s credibility so people will more likely trust and try your brand.
While creating branded hashtags is quite easy, you might want to take a peak on your competitors and other popular brands on how they utilize branded hashtags.
General hashtags
While using the most trending hashtags on your niche is a must, don’t also forget to use general hashtags since these types of hashtags can still be beneficial in increasing your audience engagement. For example, the hashtag ‘#love’ has been recognized as the most popular tag in 2019. So make sure to include them also in every of your Instagram posts to help attract new followers.
Best practices of using Instagram Hashtags
Now that you have a better understanding of hashtags and which you should use, below, we are going to show you how to put a hashtag into action. Below are some best practices of hashtags for Instagram.
How many hashtags should you use?
While the platform allows their users to use up to 30 hashtags on every post, it doesn’t mean that you should since it will only make your post look spammy. According to social media experts, they highly recommend using fewer hashtags between two to five only. Try to experiment and combine top-performing tags, trending hashtags, and the general hashtags that are highly relevant to your brand’s niche. And as we have mentioned earlier, your content must be a high-quality one to encourage engagement.
Put other hashtags in the comment section.
If you want to try more tags but don’t want to flood your captions, you can put other tags in the comment section. However, make sure to put them on the first comment and not after people have started commenting on your post.
Encourage your followers to use your hashtags.
What we are talking about here is about your branded hashtags. To enhance your brand awareness campaign, you need to ask your followers to use your branded hashtags in their posts. Also called ‘user-generated content,’ it helps you to establish your brand and build credibility fast.
Match your hashtags with your content.
You also need to be careful when placing hashtags on every post you have. Hashtags should be highly relevant not only in your niche but to each of your photos as well. Remember that Instagram is a visual platform, so pay attention and ensure that both hashtags and images correlate with one another. Also, it is vital that you invest in high-quality photos or videos to entice your viewers further. Find a good photographer or graphic designer to make high-quality images for your page.
Vary hashtags across your content.
Once your posts begin to utilize the hashtags and begin to gather engagement, it might be tempting to use those same hashtags in your other content. However, this might not be advisable since you don’t want your posts to compete with each other. To avoid this, you’ll need to add more hashtags variation. This will help you increase more chances of reaching more people and engagement.
Final Thought
Hashtags are a very powerful tool that can make your content highly visible to people, especially those who use Instagram. Use the right tools to find the most relevant hashtags in your niche and start getting engagements.
You can also visit Task Ant to find the best hashtags.