On April 5th, our social posts talked about Hashtag Tools. Yet, we all know there is more to an Instragram hashtag strategy than listing hashtags that come to mind at the time you create your post.
An Instagram hashtag strategy is an intentional, calculated way of using hashtags. Rather than haphazardly posting a handful of hashtags on the fly, creating a strategy will help you plan your content ahead of time. By doing so, you will contribute to wider conversations, build awareness, increase your followers, get more likes and help people dig deeper into a topic.
Great, now what?
We took six commonly asked questions about hashtags to help you build out a better hashtag strategy to increase your awareness, build your following base and get those likes and follower engagement.
Can you use the same hashtags over and over again?
No, do not use the same hashtags over and over again. Instagram’s algorithm may penalize you for consistently using the same hashtags.
Penalties can include:
Pushing your posts down so they will not show within that particular tag group
Ban your account because you look like your spamming users, or worse, like an Instagram bot – a type of software that automates your interaction across the platform.
Should you add hashtags to every Instagram Post?
Yes! Here are some tips when choosing your hashtags:
Try to choose hashtags that are as narrow or as niche as possible
The less volume of posts a hashtag has, the more likely you will be seen by people who follow that hashtag
Creating a subject matter that is highly specific makes it more likely for people to engage with your post
How do you add hashtags in your caption?
There are two ways you can add hashtags in your caption:
Write a caption that’s at least three lines long
Add 3-5 line breaks with a punctuation mark
How do you add a line break?
Place the text cursor at the end of you caption and hit return.Each time you do this, you will need to make sure you added a period, a dash, and asterisk, or a tilde to ensure the line stays. By doing this, you will ensure that the lines are not seen as accidental extra spaces.
Can you hide hashtags in your comments?
To put hashtags in the caption or in the comments? This has been an ongoing debate for years. Here are two thoughts you should keep in mind when deciding which you should do:
Place in the caption with profiles with fewer than 1000,000 followers because you will get better Reach rates
Place in the comments with profiles with greater than 100,000 followers because you will get better Reach rates
How many hashtags should you use?
Thirty hashtags are the maximum number you can use in a post, but I don’t recommend using all 30. The average number used is 11, but half of Instagram accounts use one to three. Using more or less depends on your Instagram goals, but more doesn’t necessarily mean better.
Hashtags fall into three categories: high, moderate and low popularity, and each perform in different ways on the platform. For example, highly popular hashtags get a lot of traffic, but it could be difficult to get your content seen if you only focus on tags with high saturation. When trying to determine what hashtags you should use, think of it in the following manner:
Two to three popular hashtags (500k to 1 million associated posts)
Two to three moderately popular hashtags (high tens of thousands to 500k)
Two to three hashtags in a small area specific to your niche
One to two hashtags specific to your brand, and which you have created
If you use the suggested number of hashtags you will have 11 strategically thought out hashtags for your post.
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