Marketing has witnessed a lot of advancements in recent years and from the past few years, Instagram marketing has been trending a lot. Businesses find it a very convenient and easy platform to reach out to their audience. If you are a user of Instagram, you might have come across the word Instagram hashtags, let us find out how it can help in the marketing of a business.
As per stats, 7 out of 10 Instagram Hashtags are branded, as they are one of the most effective driving forces of today’s successful marketing campaigns on the web.
What are Instagram Hashtags?
Before going deeper into the essence of Instagram hashtags let us just try to understand what are they. In simple words, Instagram hashtags are basically a type of hyperlink that direct you to a specific location. These are mostly used for campaigns.
If you want to get information about any stuff on Instagram then just type that stuff in your search box with a hashtag and Instagram will direct you to a bunch of posts related to that stuff. You can also create your own Instagram hashtags. Let us learn about their purpose-
Reasons to Use Instagram Hashtags
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Since the start of Instagram, things have been changing continuously on this platform but the use of Instagram hashtags is the same. People still find it a very effective way to marketing and to initiate campaigns. You must focus on building an effective strategy for Instagram hashtags to reach a wide variety of audience on this platform. If used correctly these hashtags can fetch you a number of new followers and eventually more and more new customers. There are a number of reasons to use Instagram hashtags and few highlights of them are as follows;
- One of the most important reasons to use Instagram hashtags is branding. If you are looking to market your brand on Instagram then you want people to land nowhere else rather than on your brand when they search your brand name in the search box.
- More you will share the posts with your brand hashtags the more likely you will get on top on search results. People then will be able to see your brand in the top list when they search any related name in the search box. Instagram hashtags let you enhance your branding on Instagram and with the help of these hashtags you can reach a wide variety of audience.
- Since Instagram marketing is more about visual content than written content so if you want to showcase your product on Instagram you can take the help of hashtags. You can post the photos of your product with a relevant hashtag and keep sharing it more and more and eventually when someone will search the similar name he/she will land up to your post.
- Your product will gain visibility with the use of Instagram hashtags and in this way your brand can earn more popularity over the platform.
- When you post a photo or video you never know that how many hits it will get. Using Instagram hashtags and sharing it can make your post to trend more often.
- Supposedly if you post a photo of your product on Instagram with a relevant hashtag and it gets trending then the hashtag that you used is more like to appear on other social media platforms as well hence your reach to the audience increases a lot with the use of the proper Instagram hashtag.
- You might have heard a lot about overnight trends, hashtags play an important in that. Since Instagram has evolved a lot in recent years and so it has brought many new features as well.
- You can now even follow hashtags hence if you are using a hashtag for your brand and if someone gets to like your product he/she can also follow that hashtag and you can then stay connected with them.
Notable features of Instagram Hashtags for Followers
With the evolution of Instagram, many of its features have also evolved with time and many new features have been introduced as well. There are many highlights of Instagram hashtags and here are few of them;
- Now you can also check how effective your Instagram hashtag is. You can check its progress by clicking on the insight option on any post of yours. As you will click on it, it will open a new page with data of your campaign. It will let you know how far it went and what number of users were able to see the post. This feature will also tell you how people reach up to you.
- You can also add clickable hashtags in your profile as well which is a very effective medium to lead your audience to the desired destination. Adding hashtags in your bio also makes it look more attractive and more appealing at the same time. Your Instagram bio is more functional now and you can promote anything you want from your bio only. You need to write the name of the campaign with a hashtag in front of it and it will become a clickable hashtag.
- You can add hashtags to your stories as well. Your audience will now be able to discover you more easily hence enhancing your marketing. It is very similar to the normal hashtag that you use in your posts. When someone will try to make a relevant search he/she might land up to your story as well.
These were some of the interesting features of Instagram that have been recently rolled out and few have been taken from the past but you will now find a better version of them. Using an Instagram hashtag will give you a great opportunity to promote your brand.
Working of Instagram Hashtags
Till now you might have understood the basics of Instagram hashtags and why are they so important. You might be thinking that how these hashtags work so let us just find out;
You might have heard a lot about twitter hashtags and if you know how they work then understanding the working of Instagram hashtags will be quite easy for you. Instagram hashtags basically organize photos and videos together. Whenever you search for a keyword in the search box with hashtags you will end up landing to the bunch of relevant photos and videos which are organized by Instagram.
When you add a hashtag on any of your post-Instagram makes it discoverable and it will be added along with other similar posts with similar hashtags. Let us suppose if a food blogger is posting photos or videos on Instagram with hashtags like #chocolate #superfoods and so on then any person who shows interest in such foods will be able to find his/her post very easily.
Types of Instagram Hashtags
Yes, you heard it right, Instagram hashtags are available in different types (shapes and sizes) and you need to understand these types before using them in your posts.
I) Branded Hashtags
A branded hashtag is more about a business. It is allowed if you hold an Instagram business account. It can be as simple as your company’s name, any tagline or the product’s/campaign’s name.
You can also add hashtags which resemble the identity of your brand but are not relevant to your products or company’s name. Branded hashtags will help you to reach out your audience who are interested in your offerings.
II) Community Hashtags
Community hashtags are more often used to spread a message (awareness). These are more used for social welfare. Like such hashtags can be used to make people aware of cleanliness, education and so on.
Various health issues are also under the radar of this type of hashtag. Such Instagram hashtags for followers can help a lot in spreading awareness among them about the latest issues.
III) Campaign Hashtags
Campaign hashtags are for short duration. As the name suggests they are meant to run a campaign and usually these do not last for many days like branded and community hashtags.
These hashtags are more often used in live videos or stories. These hashtags last for a short interval of time because such campaigns are more directed to any event, season and so on.
How to Find Best Instagram Hashtags?
If you want to use Instagram hashtags for your business or any specific purpose then you will have to make a very straightforward strategy for that. There are a lot of popular hashtags already trending on the Instagram platform but they might not be useful for you so you have to be very specific with your decision about choosing the right Instagram hashtags.
A major drawback of using the most popular Instagram hashtags is that you won’t be able to stand out from the crowd and there it becomes really difficult to spread your message. Even you might not be able to get enough likes on your posts.
A very obvious question might be striking your might is where can we find the best Instagram hashtags for our posts. You will have to do a little bit or research and a proper analysis for that.
You will have to see what hashtags your audience and competitors in the industry are using and then you will have to analyze that which Instagram hashtag will serve the purpose for you. Here are certain tips to find the best Instagram hashtags for your posts;
1) Later’s Instagram Hashtags Generator
There is a tool by Later, which suggests you the best Instagram hashtags for your posts. Suggestions are provided automatically by searching the relevant hashtags based on your posts. Other Instagram hashtags generator will provide you with a number of Instagram hashtags for your posts.
2) Research
You can not just start using random hashtags on your posts and expect your audience to grow. Instead, it is advised to research what Instagram hashtags are popular among your audience and then you will be able to figure out which hashtag is best for your posts.
You can also search for the top hashtags used by your competitors of the similar interest and other industry leaders and then you can make a proper analysis of that which will lead you to the best Instagram hashtag for your posts.
You can also prepare an Instagram hashtag cheat sheet in this way and write down the most common hashtags that you will be using in future.
Instagram Hashtags Tips and Tricks
Till now we have talked about every bit of important aspects of Instagram hashtags, let us now take a look at some of the tips and tricks of Instagram hashtags:
- Never use irrelevant Instagram hashtags as it will only degrade your credibility and will disappoint your followers. You should not try to mislead your audience hence using irrelevant hashtags is considered as a spammy behaviour. Using relevant hashtags will increase the trust of your followers on you.
- Do not fill your posts with a lot of hashtags. According to reports using 9 hashtags will increase your reach the most but it doesn’t mean that you try to use 9 hashtags only. Be wise and use relevant hashtags only. In order to increase the number of hashtags do not end up using irrelevant hashtags or unnecessary hashtags.
- The hashtags that you are using should be specific. This will fetch you targeted audience only. The more targeted audience on your page means more chances of conversion.
- Using popular hashtags is not always the best ideas as it will not let you stand out of the crowd rather you will just become a part of the crowd. Try to use the top hashtags related to your posts rather than going for most popular hashtags.
- It is advised to save a few hashtags for future use as well. If you search for hashtags and have got a bunch of relevant hashtags then write down a few of them for your future use.
- You can also add hashtags to the already published posts. You can use this feature in order to trend your older posts again by introducing some top hashtags related to your post.
- You should focus on using brand hashtags more if you are using Instagram for the promotion of your brand. Try to keep this hashtags as short as you can. It leaves a good impact on the viewer and increases your credibility.
- You must also give a try to introducing emojis in between your hashtags.
Instagram Hashtags Cheatsheet
As per Instagram hashtags cheatsheet, below given steps will enable you to use Instagram Hashtags like a pro-
- Know your content and audience
- Follow hashtags
- Give attention to the numbers
- Hide your hashtags
- Never use the same set of hashtags on every Instagram post
- Use branded hashtags
- Add hashtags in your story posts
- include location-specific hashtags
- Use Instagram daily hashtags
Final Words
Instagram hashtags can be a popular tool to promote your business on Instagram if used correctly.
It is advised to use the right hashtags in order to reach the targeted audience only. Use the features provided by Instagram to make your hashtag campaign more effective.
Joining Social Media Marketing Course can help you learn and master all the concepts of Instagram Marketing with utmost ease and dexterousness. Still, if you have any doubts about Instagram Marketing, feel free to share with us in comments.
