How To Improve Your Instagram Hashtag Strategy

The daily struggle of a modern Instagrammer: You’ve got your Instagram post ready to go, caption and all, then you hit the inevitable wall every social media user dreads –  which hashtags do I use?!

Not only which hashtags do I use, but how many? And where? Should a post use up all 30 permitted hashtags? Or should it just be a few hashtags sprinkled throughout the caption? We know, we know. 

The options are essentially endless, but which tactic actually works and increases your reach per post?

Statistically speaking, a post with at least one hashtag brings in 12.6% more engagement than posts with no hashtag at all. So at least we know utilizing hashtags are worthwhile. Now it just comes down to which ones and how many. 

Perhaps we’ve just currently triggered your Instagram hashtag stress reflex, but luckily you’ve come to the right place to get that squared away. Now, let’s dive into how to improve your Instagram hashtag strategy, so you can boost your engagement and get your posts discovered by more and more people within your industry. 

Probably one of the longest reining features on the Instagram, hashtags are without a doubt here to stay. 88% of brands use at least one hashtag in their posts and it’s created an insane organizational system within Instagram. Looking for some indoor plant inspiration? Just type in #indoorplants into the Instagram search bar and welcome to a Pinterest inspired indoor plant wormhole. See you in a few hours. 

That being said, it would make sense to utilize hashtags that are relevant to your industry. Let’s say you’re account is in the fitness realm, it may be good to use hashtags like #fitnessaddict #fitnesstips or #fitspo just to name a few. By using popular (but relevant) hashtags, your content will now be in front of users who are interested in your industry. 

Seems easy right? It can be as long as you test out new hashtags and use analytics to figure out which hashtags are bringing in the best results for your posts. 

First off, if you run a brand or business, it would be most beneficial to have an Instagram business profile. One of the many benefits of the business profile is the built in analytics on each post. You’re able to see how many views you’ve received on your post from hashtags alone.

Unfortunately, it does not break it down by each specific hashtag (yet!) but gives you a general overview. This can all be found under the ‘View Insights’ option when looking at your post.

Compare and contrast each post to see which posts received the most hashtag impressions. A great testing strategy would be to create two separate lists of different hashtags and use each group on every other image. From there, you’ll be able to see which group of hashtags are most effective. Of course, you’ll only want to do this once you have a solid list of hashtags to pull from.  

That brings us to hashtag research and testing. It’s incredibly important to know which specific hashtags have brought in the most traffic to your post. This is advantageous to know for quite a number of reasons. 

First, this will give you insight into which hashtags are most beneficial for you to use. You don’t want to use a hashtag that isn’t bringing in any traction to your account. You may as well not use any hashtag at all if that’s the case. 

Second, knowing which hashtags work best will allow you to see which hashtags have the most active followers. On Instagram, it’s incredibly important to build a solid community around your brand. If there is a hashtag that is bringing in a lot of traffic to your posts, it’s safe to say this hashtag has a great community of engaged followers willing to connect. 

The next question is, have you really tested out what works best? With this portion of the hashtag strategy, you’re definitely going to need some assistance to fully analyze which hashtags work best for your account. 

Later has a great Hashtag Analytics tool, providing insight into which individual hashtag drives not only the most engagement but breaks it down a step further to show you the amount of comments, impressions, saves, reach and likes each hashtag brings in. This information will completely transform your Instagram hashtag strategy as you will know exactly where your traffic is coming from and more importantly what works. 

Another useful tool for track hashtag effectiveness is Iconosquare. Pretty similar to Later, this platform helps you to see which hashtags are bringing in the most engagement and which hashtags are your top performers.

Both tools have a relatively different interface, so it may be useful to give each a try to see which you prefer. 

Either way, this opens up so much potential to really improve your Instagram hashtag strategy to get your content noticed by more people.  

Now let’s get into how to find hashtags that are relevant to your account. 

The first thing you can do is research a hashtag within the Instagram app. Once you type that in, Instagram will generate a list of hashtags that may be of interest to you. For example, when you research #veganfood on Instagram, underneath that hashtag, Instagram suggests additional hashtags such as #veganrecipes #plantbasedfood #easyvegan #veganmeal and so on. Instagram will essentially pair up hashtags based on the interests of people following the original #veganfood hashtag. 

Now down to which hashtags to choose. The more popular the hashtag doesn’t necessarily mean the better it is. In fact, this could mean quite the opposite. If a hashtag already has millions of posts, chances are your post will disappear into the abyss of that hashtag very quickly. 

Instead, try using semi popular hashtags that are more brand specific. For example, an alternative to #beach which has 211 million posts would be #bestbeaches which has 158k posts instead. The second option is definitely still popular, but less saturated, which gives you more of a chance for your post to be seen. 

Another way to find great hashtags is to type a hashtag into the Instagram app and have a look at the hashtag’s top posts by following the hashtag. This will give you some hashtag inspiration as you’ll be able to see which hashtags these accounts are using and potentially which hashtags are trending within your industry. 

When researching keep one thing in mind – consider what is relevant to your account not what is most popular amongst the general public. Knowing which hashtags are most popular within your niche will give you a secret weapon into winning the Instagram hashtag game. Generally the more niche a hashtag is, the easier it will be to connect with the accounts following that hashtag. Try to include key words or phrases within a hashtag to make sure you are connecting with the appropriate audience.

If you’re using Later or Iconosquare to track your hashtags, both platforms also provide suggestions on new hashtags you can try out. 

But how many do I use? 

The answer is never zero. Now, whether or not you should use all 30 permitted hashtags on each post is totally up to you. Experts suggest you should use on average 10 per post, and if you are using several, keep it towards the bottom of your caption or within a comment so that your caption isn’t overwhelming or cluttered. 

Definitely experiment with different hashtags amounts and see what works best. Also, try not to overuse the same hashtags consistently as this can come across as spammy. 

Another tactic is to also include hashtags in places other than just your caption. 

If you have a brand or business account and have created a branded hashtag, it would be beneficial to include that somewhere within your Instagram bio so that users are aware of your hashtag as soon as they come across your profile. There’s a chance that a viewer may not be interested in following your business account, but instead will follow your branded hashtag as they prefer user-generated content over brand content. 

Oh, and don’t forget to include hashtags in your stories to increase your views!

When it comes to Instagram hashtag strategy, there is definitely an art to it. The biggest takeaway from all of this is to know what’s trending. Additionally, without tracking tools and efforts, you will not be able to tell what is working and what is not, so essentially you will not be able to improve your strategy. 

Implementing the right hashtags into your posts will increase your brand exposure and reach each time you post. As long as you do it right and make sure you are up-to-date on what’s trending, you’ll definitely see positive results. 

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