Instagram Hashtags: How to Get More Reach in 2021
Instagram Hashtags are an important feature of Instagram that helps you to build and have more traffic to your website or blog post.
If you are looking for a detailed guide on Instagram hashtags, their types, and how you can use them for your business, then you have landed on the right page.
Keep on reading to learn more about them.
1.
What are Instagram Hashtags?
With changing dynamics, many businesses are using social media to promote their business and lead generation. Instagram hashtags are powerful. One of the biggest advantages of using them is that it helps your posts to reach the target audience, attract followers in your niche, increase engagement and develop a more positive and recognizable brand image.
Let’s learn more about it.
You might have heard and even observed the power of Instagram in recent years.
According to stats, the number of users on Instagram is increasing day by day.
In other words, you can simply say that people are using more social media than ever.
Why?
With COVID-19 Pandemic and varying situations in the whole world, many businesses are now shifting to the digital market.
They are making use of social media more than ever as it helps them reach their target audience and have better leads.
There are a number of reasons why many people choose to use Instagram.
And one of the biggest reasons is that it provides visual images that you can make use of.
These images let you know about different services and products of any business account, a brand, a product, or other things about them.
This is how users get an idea of what your services or products are all about.
Thus, with the help of these images, you can effectively influence the decision-making process of your target audience and drive more traffic and sales to your websites, blog posts, or page.
You can understand this with the help of the following data:
As you can see that one of the most engaging social media content is images after content writing and videos.
Instagram Hashtags
Hashtags are Instagram’s sorting process.
About 95 million photo posts every day, it is often difficult to deliver the right content to the right people.
Thus, hashtags make your post more discoverable by viewers that are interested in viewing it.
Many people around the view who are successfully running businesses on Instagram are of the view that when you add hashtags it helps you to get more specific with a targeted reach.
The audiences searching for these hashtags are also narrowing down their search to see what brands or businesses are offering.
Thus, it helps to reach the right people.
Moreover, Instagram Hashtags are a better way to characterize your posts and they help your target audience find you.
2.
Types and Benefits of Instagram Hashtags
There are a number of types of Instagram Hashtags, however, the right hashtag you intend to use depends on the type of your business or brand.
Moreover, they offer different benefits to your business.
Let’s discuss them as follows:
There are different types of Instagram Hashtags. These are:
- Branded and Product Hashtags
- Campaign Hashtags
- Community and Industry Hashtags
- Location Hashtags
- Themed Hashtags
- Daily Hashtags
- Other types of Hashtags
Let’s discuss them as follows:
Branded and Product Hashtags
If you are already using Instagram, chances are that a version of your branded hashtag already exists.
Branded hashtags are often the brand’s name, a brand slogan, or related to its community.
The first one already exists while you will have to make the other two.
However, a product hashtag is a combination of your brand name and the product name.
This helps you to track posts and specific products as well.
Creating a hashtag for your brand is simple, and you can easily carry it out on different social media platforms.
For instance, in the above example, you can see that EcoTools use their branded hashtag to encourage the use of it.
You can use these hashtags in your bio and pair them with a call to action.
However, it depends entirely on you how to decide the use of it.
Campaign Hashtags
Campaign hashtags are specific to marketing campaigns that you want to run or intend to run in the future.
This involves you running a campaign and adding a hashtag to it in either a caption or in the corner of your post.
You can observe such hashtags on the corner of your TV ads, however, they can be very prominent if there are in the center or highlighted.
One example is #dubaifashion, which often companies use in order to promote their products or services.
This helps them to achieve their target audience and in return when people post something about their products they can easily track the use and siting.
Moreover, it is important to note that you do not need to tie campaign hashtags to products or sales.
Another hashtag, #lovedubai encourages people to go out rather than make a purchase.
Community and Industry Hashtags
Nearly, every community and industry makes use of one hashtag.
To find your hashtag, you can head to some popular community and industry influencer posts and check out their hashtags.
Many hashtags of this type are simple and are easy to think of.
Simply for foods and beverages, you can find more than 64k hashtags along with their related ones.
All of these are pretty straightforward and natural to think up. Thus, you can easily use them in posts that are relevant to it.
Location Hashtags
Location hashtags are pretty obvious or self-explanatory. Many brands are based somewhere and if you have a physical location, then they can be even more useful.
Relevant hashtags include your city and are also associated with topical hashtags, your neighborhood, the mall you are in, and other defining features.
One example is #Pierchicdubai, #JumeirahAlQasar for an Italian resturant in Al Jumeirah, Dubai.
Another example is #dmvfoodie which is the location and topic hashtag.
This is the post for those looking for food recommendations or users in that specific area.
However, other location hashtags can include branded ones that your city’s tourism boards have established already.
Themed Hashtags
Have you ever looked at certain hashtags like #nationalfoodday and wonder who comes up with such ideas?
Although national hashtags days are arbitrary, they are still fun for your audience to participate in and get attention to specific topics.
So why not join in when the day comes by that matches your business type?
For instance, if you are running a seafood restaurant, and you want to make use of Internal Sushi Day on 18 June, then you do not need to mention the exact name.
The name itself will represent your restaurant on the feed when people search for it.
You can also use such hashtags to promote the business of a friend or a family member.
Daily Hashtags
Daily hashtags are not only limited to Instagram, but you can also find them on other platforms and there are easy to find.
These hashtags start with the name of the day and then follow up with the topic.
Such an example is #throwbackthursday.
Nearly any brand type can use them and there are different niche topics it covers.
However, it is important to note that these hashtags cover more interest-based topics and happens to be daily.
These daily hashtags need some time to find, however, if you are following influencers in your niche, then you can observe them using such hashtags.
Learn more about Influencer Marketing here.
Trending Hashtags
Often, these hashtags are difficult to find as it involves keeping tabs on the latest and also knowing how to apply them to your own brand.
For instance, consider an example of the image of Bernie Sanders sitting in a chair with mittens and a face mask that became an instant meme.
You may have also noticed this image almost on every brand page making the most of it.
However, like mems and trends are short-lived. When you make use of it early and participate in it, then you can reap the benefits of jumping on the trend.
For this, you will have to amp up your trendspotting skills for social media to get the most out of jumping on memes and trends in a timely and brand-specific way.
Other Hashtags
Other types of hashtags are:
- Ironic or commentary hashtags
- Banned Hashtags
Ironic or commentary hashtags are more humorous and are not often used by brands.
However, they can be helpful if they are relevant to your brand voice.
On the other hand, banned hashtags are offensive or spam ones, or may trigger a flag on your content.
While often such terms are not a part of your brainstorming ideas, however, it is important to understand how the platforms are monitoring the use of hashtags.
Benefits of Instagram Hashtags
There are a lot of benefits of using Instagram Hashtags for your brand or website. No matter what your social media goals are, there is an advantage for everyone.
Let’s discuss them as follows:
Increases exposure and discovery
One of the biggest reasons for using Instagram hashtags is that it helps to increase your brand exposure and discovery.
When you use a hashtag, it takes your user to the gallery of both top posts and the latest posts.
This helps you to explore all the related posts making hashtags a great way for individuals interested in a specific topic.
Moreover. It helps them to find more accounts to follow.
Encourage Audience Interactions
When you make use of branded hashtags and encourage their use then it becomes another form of customer engagement.
Think of this as just another way to reach and engage your customers.
Competitor Analysis
Instagram hashtags help you to analyze your share of voice on social media.
Many times, you and your competitor are using the same hashtags, especially if you are in the same industry.
In an ideal situation, your and your competitor’s posts are taking the most share of the hashtags search results.
However, For content inspiration, you can check other relevant posts and get different ideas.
Content Research
In the same way, you conduct SEO keyword research, hashtags can help you search for content ideas.
Let’s just say that you want to increase your share of voice for the #digitalmarketing hashtag.
With this hashtag you can find a number of posts, however, you can see the page’s top tab to see the best posts.
By clicking on these posts, you will be able to find unique ideas or hashtags that are less highly populated, however, is relevant to your audience.
Linking Digital and IRL Campaign
You might have observed that today most shopping brands in the mall have a marketing campaign attached to a hashtag.
These hashtags offer an easy way to connect digital and in-real-life campaigns.
3.
How to Use Instagram Hashtags for your Business?
You can effectively make use of Instagram hashtags for your business.
This process involves targeting the specific industry or niche you are working on and making use of these hashtags in your posts on Instagram.
Let’s discuss these points in detail.
The following are the points you should keep in mind while making use of Instagram Hashtags for your Business
1# Keep your Hashtags Organized
In order to create an effective hashtag system, you can use Excel or Instagram Analytics Tools.
If you choose to use an Excel sheet, you will have to manually keep track of which hashtags to use, how often, and which one correlated to your most popular posts.
Over time, you will see relations between certain hashtags and your most popular posts.
This can help you to decide which hashtags work best for your brand and campaign.
However, if you have an advanced social media team, then you might want to consider using a tool like Iconosquare.
This tool automatically stores top hashtags and provides reports on which hashtags reach the most individuals.
In other cases, for small businesses, an Excel sheet is the best way to start.
Once you get more advanced and expand your brand, you can use different tools to track data.
2# Figure Out your Magic Number
Many brands use seven or fewer hashtags in a single post, thus, it is safe to assume that that is the magic number for everyone.
However, this is not always the case.
To be more successful in using hashtags, you should have hashtags ranging in the low 20s.
The point being, you cannot know how many hashtags work best for you until you actually use them in your posts.
For many brands, it can take a few months to find a specific number that works best for your brand, and during this period, you can change this number.
Moreover, give yourself the same flexibility for trial and error.
3# Narrow your Hashtags
There are two reasons to be more specific and use smaller-volume hashtags.
First, you can compete in a smaller pool.
For instance, we are Markfiniti do not use a broad term like #marketing for our content.
This is because, with this hashtag, you will find pictures of restaurants, inspirational quotes, before-and-after hairstyle pictures, etc.
Moreover, the randomness of #marketing leads to a second reason: what you are more likely to find what you search for something specific.
When our business comes up with your specific search request, then we are more likely to be found.
Thus, keeping hashtags close to the interests of your brands helps a lot.
When you use a specific topic and then narrow it down even further, then it is more beneficial for you.
Consider an example: When we use #SEOTips, you are more likely to find the post of Markfiniti in the search results.
4# Do your Research and Test out your Hashtags
One of the easiest ways to generate hashtags ideas is to make a list of your followers or competitors and research what they are using on their photos.
Moreover, it can be particularly helpful to research what influencers in your industry are hashtagging. Thus, you can effectively use them in your own posts as well.
When you type a hashtag on the search bar, it shows you related hashtags in the scroll-down menu.
Additionally, it delivers related hashtags on the next page after you click on a hashtag, which is a simple way to create a longer list.
5# Follow your Own Hashtags and Create your own Campaign
Another way you can use this is to create your own brand’s hashtag.
You can write your own brand’s name hashtag and see what users are connected to your hashtag.
If your account is not private, then people will be able to find you via the hashtag.
Following your own hashtag is an effective way to engage with your customers and other people who are talking about your brand and thus develop a better relationship with them.
Creating a brand campaign is a difficult thing on the list.
However, if you do it successfully, then it can pay off big time.
With your own hashtag campaigns, many businesses have attracted a lot of followers.
Your campaign hashtag needs to be smart and clever in order to work.
If you want to promote a new product or an upcoming event then campaign hashtags are particularly useful.
Learn more about Top Notch Instagram ads here.
Final Thoughts
Using Instagram Hashtags is crucial for your Instagram marketing strategy. Following best practices can help increase your followers and boost the number of leads coming from Instagram.
Instagram users use Instagram hashtags and are present in usual user generated content on Instagram stories or Instagram Bios. Moreover, you’ll find a list of hashtags on different websites and use the top 30 hashtags.
Do let us know in the comment section if you find this article useful.