So far we have seen countless marketing tools for Instagram to match every taste and pocket, however, one free but effective option is often overlooked — hashtags. Are these still a thing? You bet! To this day, people resort to the use of hashtags to look for reviews or any other additional information on products, services, or companies. From a business perspective, it is a powerful tool with great potential but one should handle it properly.
Let’s see what we can do to make hashtags work, get new subscribers or clients, boost your revenue and avoid potential mistakes.
How Instagram hashtags actually work
Hashtags are essential for both internal search within the network and marketing promotion. Basically, hashtags are internal links to the posts or profiles marked with a hash symbol — «#».
This is how it works: by clicking such a link, users are directed to the page which contains all Instagram posts with this tag.
Hashtags can be added to:
Instagram bio;
posts or carousels;
comments;
stories;
reels.
It is technically possible to add up to 30 hashtags depending on the maximum number of characters per post, for Instagram it is 2200. So if you are planning to use 30 particularly long hashtags consisting of phrases, they simply won’t fit.
As for the number of hashtags to use, opinions vary. Many SMM specialists recommend adding not more than 10 hashtags. The thing is that Instagram algorithms may see excessive use of hashtags as a spam activity and either block or shadowban you for it. However, there is an opposite point of view: don’t limit yourself to 5-10 hashtags otherwise you can miss promotional opportunities, so mention from 15 to 20 hashtags at once instead.
Just like SEO keywords, hashtags can be:
rare or super low frequency — up to 500 posts;
low frequency — 500-10,000 posts;
medium frequency — 10,000-100,000 posts;
high frequency — from 100,000 posts.
Instagram hashtags allow you to engage people interested in the topic, that is, your potential subscribers or clients. But remember: you can only rank on hashtags if your Instagram profile is not private.
Types of Instagram hashtags
Hashtags are necessary for internal navigation, content search, and promotion. All hashtags are nominally divided by function.
Content-based. These hashtags include words explaining what the post is about. They are indispensable when it comes to attracting your target audience.
Topic-based. They indicate the niches of the business, products, services or blogs (e.g. tourism, travel, fitness, etc.)
Navigational. They make it easier for followers to find themed posts on your account and also may come in handy for highlighting promotions, contests, and giveaways.
Locational. They may include country, region, city, district, street or subway station. It’s a good choice for local business promotion.
Campaign or event-oriented. These hashtags are suitable for Instagram contests to increase user engagement, identify participants and choose winners.
Commercial. They include such words as “buy”, “order” and refer to sales.
Branded. They contain a mention of the company's name or a word/phrase associated with it and are used to increase brand awareness.
Trending. These are usually trends in a certain business niche aimed at boosting audience engagement. This type of hashtags may also include seasonal events or holidays such as Black Friday, New Year and so on.
Spammy or viral. We strongly recommend avoiding them. These hashtags represent a big red flag for Instagram algorithms as they are usually used for promotion with bots. For instance, #followme.
Speaking about a big no-no: ready-made Instagram hashtag compilations in open access are also not the best idea as they are most likely to include spammy tags.
Tactics to rank higher
Surely that is clear as day: the more often your content is seen, the more people learn about your company or personal blog. Instagram users who didn’t even know you existed up until now may get interested in what you have to offer, all thanks to free hashtag traffic.
Hashtags for marketing purposes should be chosen wisely. Newbie bloggers usually assume that hashtags can be used any way they like. But in reality, a lack of strategy will be non-beneficial at best and harmful at worst.
What to keep in mind when using hashtags:
Language. You can either use your mother tongue or the language of the country you have your business in. Don’t worry if neither of them is English as it is spoken by over 1,5 billion people around the world so the competition level is high anyway and you might as well avoid such hashtags. The choice of language depends on the target audience: for instance, if you want to promote your goods or services to customers in Canada, it’s only logical to write hashtags in English and French.
Longtail hashtag spelling. If your hashtag consists of more than two parts, they should either be #mergedtogether or written_with_underscores. Using a space between two words will technically mean two separate hashtags. You can also opt for emojis or numbers but other special characters like dots, ampersands or dollar signs won’t work. And one more thing: #never #make #hashtag #sentences #like #this #one.
Readability. Keep the tail of your hashtag short, otherwise, it will be difficult to read plus hardly anyone will bother with typing in a long query.
Avoid banned hashtags. They include spammy tags like #love, obscene language, insults, propaganda of violence and words associated with fraudulent activities.
Limits. You can add up to 30 hashtags but it’s best to use 10 or even less. If you frequently use more than 10 hashtags without changing them, Instagram may consider it suspicious and mark your posts as spam.
Make sure to stand out. If your company or brand name includes a common word, it’s better to double-check whether other companies use the same tag or not. Otherwise, your target audience may easily take you for your competitor.
Relevance. Hashtags should be relevant to the post, GEO, or business. For instance, if you promote B2B services like web design, don’t use tags like #kitties or #sexy.
If you aim for the top, first of all, you need to identify a set of hashtags you are planning to use for your promotional campaign. They should be analyzed in terms of competitiveness, number of likes and posting time. If your posts aren’t as popular as you’d like them to be, you can try using less popular hashtags. You will also need to choose an appropriate posting schedule by determining the time when your audience is the most active. You can do it by viewing your Instagram account statistics or using services such as Popsters.
The competition is much lower for stories in comparison with ordinary posts on the feed. You can try promotion via stories by clicking “Add a sticker” and choosing a hashtag option.
Tips to choose the right hashtags
Hashtag selection starts with building the keyword inventory that best describes your company or business. To do so, you need to run keyword analysis with Google Ads. Apart from direct keywords, it’s worth paying attention to the ones similar in meaning as well.
Let’s say, you have a business associated with beauty services. In this case, you can use hashtags such as “cosmetologist”, “hairdresser”, “beauty parlor” and so on. This analysis will help you to single out a semantic core that you should focus on for further research.
Instagram recommendations in the search query
There is one simple way to search for Instagram hashtags manually. You just need to start typing in the Instagram search bar the words that you are planning to use as hashtags for your business niche. For example, a freelance designer creates Instagram AR filters. Using the search bar, it is possible to analyze the density of the hashtag #instagramfilters.
This way you will see the total number of posts a certain hashtag has and how it is spelled: merged in one, with underscores, emojis, etc. Then you can also assess the quality of the posts in the search query, their reach, number of likes and comments and thus estimate your own chances in this niche.
How to use popular hashtags
Popular hashtags should be used very carefully as they are usually exploited by people or companies that want some “quick fame”. You can try adding a couple of popular hashtags here and there with slight variations to avoid possible Instagram bans.
It is advisable to use an equal amount of rare, low, medium and high-frequency hashtags; add GEOs and other specific tags that will make your account stand out. For instance, instead of #homemadecake you can write #homemadecakeantalya which will definitely bring you more target customers.
Advantages:
suitable for boosting your Instagram reach: if a post is worthy, there is a high chance it will be noticed in the “Most recent” section;
work perfectly in the early stages of account development and ensure fast promotion.
Disadvantages:
used so widely that your posts may get lost in the content stream;
attractive for fake accounts who resort to mass following: they get a lot of subscribers in return but they will never become loyal customers.
Popular hashtag examples: #photo, #photography, #guide, #video, #fitness, #diet.
Instagram hashtag generator
Generators are online tools that can create hashtags based on specified settings. Some services provide analytics, categorize hashtags and sort them by topic.
There are free and paid options depending on the feature sets and developer policies.
Although manual search allows you to carefully review and select appropriate hashtags, it is still pretty time-consuming. Generators will do it much faster, however, it doesn’t mean it will be effective quality-wise. That’s why it’s better to combine two approaches: compile your own hashtag selection with the generator and then manually check and analyze each one.
Best free hashtag generators:
Displaypurposes — This service will help you find relevant hashtags upon a specific request (e.g. words describing your business niche) and filter out spammy and banned ones. It also displays popular hashtags sorted by GEO on the interactive map.
Best-Hashtags — Here you will be provided with a detailed analysis and hashtag selection sorted by frequency for any given word. These sets can be copied with one click and edited to your liking.
Ritetag — Apart from generating hashtag lists with in-depth reports, this service can also make hashtag suggestions for uploaded texts and images.
Competitor analysis
The first step is to single out your major competitors, for example, companies that occupy the same niche and GEO and have similar number of employees, turnover and other resembling parameters.
As for hashtags, competing accounts should be analyzed according to the following criteria:
kinds of hashtags they use;
level of frequency (high, medium, low, rare, etc.);
number of hashtags per post.
Pay attention to the target audience of your competitors and their range of interests in order to figure out related search queries.
You can collect data on your competitors in an Excel spreadsheet and analyze it manually or, alternatively, use special tools like Hashtagify or KeywordTool to find influencers and keep track of recent hashtags and trends. Tools like LiveDune help with parsing hashtags that Instagram users (including the followers of competing accounts) tend to employ. This way you will be able to identify areas of common interest and attract new audience.
Hashtag analysis with Popsters tools
Popsters is a social media analytics tool. You can get a detailed report on how certain hashtags influence Instagram reach and activity for both your own and competing accounts.
To start you need to enter your query (page name, URL address or hashtag) in the search bar, specify the time period you are interested in and run the analysis. You will be presented with extended reposts and illustrative charts according to the selected parameters.
It’s essential to pay attention to the following performance metrics:
Hashtag chart. It displays the number of posts with certain hashtags for the chosen period of time. You can also find additional information on the number of tags per post and how often they are used.
Hashtags/ER. It shows the average ER post of all posts with a particular hashtag.
It is useful for calculating the efficiency of the ad tags, chosen categories or competitive analysis.
Relative activity by hashtags. It shows the activity of an average publication with a particular hashtag in relation to posts with other hashtags.
How to use hashtags for Instagram promotion
When used correctly, hashtags can help increase organic reach and attract new followers and clients. Proper use means well-planned preliminary work. But let’s review everything in order.
Step 1. Plan and launch your campaign
Before launching your marketing campaign and creating an Instagram account it is beneficial to create a semantic core for hashtags. It can consist of 100-150 tags related to your business niche or describing advertised products.
Hashtags can be added to every post or selectively not to arouse any suspicion and avoid bans. It’s recommended to use the most popular hashtag associated with the company in the profile bio in order to increase brand awareness. But remember: your profile information can only contain up to 150 symbols so it’s vital to save some room for your unique selling proposition, company slogan and other important details.
Once you create the semantic core, the hashtags included in it should be divided into groups. For example, your semantic core consists of 120 words — it can be split into 12 groups of 10 hashtags each. Every group should include high, medium and low-frequency hashtags, as well as topic-based, unique and locational ones. The number of medium and low-frequency hashtags should exceed the number of high-frequency hashtags as the latter are less efficient due to great competition. The first type, on the contrary, attracts less followers, however, they are more motivated.
It’s necessary to think through the number of hashtags per post, let’s say, 10-12. If there are too many of them, they can be hidden or concealed.
Recommendations on the number of hashtags:
according to SMM specialists, a good ratio is 30% high, 30% medium and 40% low-frequency hashtags;
it’s also worth adding 1-2 niche, 1 branded, 1-2 viral and a few locational tags (e.g. street, subway station, district, city).
Your hashtag set should be updated about every two weeks, otherwise your publications will be shown to the same audience over and over again.
How to hide hashtags on Instagram
It’s a good idea to separate hashtags from the main text using dots or spaces and place them at the very end of the post. Plenty of tags in the beginning may be distracting and even irritating. People just won’t keep reading. As an option, you can add 2-4 hashtags inside the post (they should fit in the context!) and include the rest in the comments.
With hashtags being hidden, your posts will look much more attractive and won’t come as spammy. One of the ways to conceal hashtags is to partially add them in the first comment above. Don’t worry, they will be ranking just as good but only if this comment is left by the author of the post.
Another method is to write a post, leave any comment below (for example, with emojis) and add hashtags in the answer to this comment. Then, if you delete the initial emoji comment, the answer will be hidden but won’t disappear completely so the hashtags will still be ranking.
Step 2. Evaluate campaign results
Result assessment is important for understanding how effective your campaign is. In 2 weeks, you can measure the statistics on reach, engagement, and conversion rate and compare the results to the previous reporting cycles. Hashtag groups should be compared to each other to see which one brought the biggest number of active users to the account.
Tools for hashtag performance evaluation:
Sproutsocial — It tracks all the tags you use and engagement level within the chosen period of time. The tool allows you to see which hashtags should be added more often and which ones, on the contrary, should be avoided.
LiveDune — This service collects the data on the number of posts for a selected hashtag in a given time period.
Brand24 — It gives you an opportunity to search, select and filter influencers with similar blog topics and analyze the effectiveness of their tags.
Onlypult — This platform provides detailed analytics on your audience: number of followers, growth after every marketing campaign, ER, and prompts on popular and banned hashtags.
InstaHero — One more tool for in-depth audience analysis: it helps to increase engagement, reach and assess the quality of recent followers.
Platform trend HERO has a 14-day trial period and allows you to check 1 Instagram account with up to 10 000 followers for free. In the future, this restriction is expected to be lifted. So far, a permanent restriction exists for accounts with less than 500 followers.
The report is compiled within 6 hours depending on the size and history of the account. The ready-made report includes the best hashtags arranged according to the post’s reach and number of likes. Moreover, trendHERO reveals the percentage of real followers (without mass following and bots), average ER and the audience statistics by countries, cities, gender, age and type. By ‘type’ we mean real followers, suspicious accounts. mass followers, influencers and commercial accounts.
Step 3. Run a contest
Instagram giveaways, quizzes or contests increase brand awareness, attract attention and motivate user-generated content. They also increase engagement rate, number of likes and reposts. Contest or event-oriented hashtags help to track the participants.
Winners can be chosen with the following tools:
Tintup — just enter your contest hashtag and email and you will be sent a list of the winners;
Lizaonair — identifies the winners by the link to a giveaway post;
You to gift — allows you to choose the winner within one or multiple posts or among the followers.
However, contests and giveaways have one drawback: participants can turn out to be one-time followers who just love freebies. They are usually unmotivated and non-paying customers who will either unfollow the account once the contest is over or won’t be active which will lower your engagement rate. That’s why it’s desirable to use such promotional campaigns only in combination with other techniques.
Step 4. Get mentioned by popular accounts
Popular brands and influencers can repost publications if they resonate with the concept of their account. To increase the number of views on your profile, you can tag celebrities, brands or commercial accounts. This way your post might be seen by millions of Instagram users. Many of them will even follow you and become loyal clients.
Here are some examples of accounts that mention their followers:
@photographenlarger — #enlargemyphoto
@beautifuldestinations — #beautifuldestinations
@naturegramy — #naturegramy;
@urbanoutfitters — #UOonYou;
@starbucks — #CupsOfKindness.
If you leave a comment with your hashtag below the post of an influencer or a famous brand, the posts will rank along with this hashtag which is good for promotion. However, spam is frowned upon so use this trick wisely.
Conclusion
To make your campaign efficient it’s crucial to find a good balance and use different hashtags types: branded, locational, trending, content-based, etc. It’s better not to abuse popular or viral tags as they usually attract non-target audience and incentivized traffic.
Working with tags requires systematization and thoughtfulness — only then the results will meet your expectations. Hashtags can bring you likes, followers and potential clients and increase overall account activity. This in turn will contribute to Instagram algorithms showing more of your publications in the feed and have a positive impact on brand awareness for a fledgling company or a small niche business.
FAQ
