The Ultimate Guide to Hashtags on Instagram in 2021

Though things have definitely changed over the last year, hashtags are still an effective strategy to get more eyes on your posts and profile. However; how you use them could make or break your strategy. This ultimate guide to hashtags will hopefully give you a better understanding about hashtags and how you can use them to build a community, increase your engagement, and yes … get more followers.

What are hashtags and why should we use them in our strategy?

Before diving in - let's start with the basics, what are hashtags and why do we need to use them?

A hashtag is a combination of letters, numbers, and/or emojis - all of which start with the # symbol. They are used to categorize content and make it more discoverable.

Hashtags are a great way to expand your reach and grow your audience. When you use a specific hashtag, you will appear somewhere within the page for that hashtag. Some users even follow hashtags, which gives you the potential of being seen by someone - even if they're not following you.

What are the different types of hashtags?

Now, let’s chat about the different types of hashtags that are commonly used on Instagram.

#communityhashtags

Community hashtags are hashtags that help you reach similar users to a specific topic. These hashtags are a great way to gain followers, reach like-minded folks to build a community, and improve searchability. These hashtags might include words that describe a product or service you offer or maybe words that describe your specific niche. These could be location hashtags or fun daily hashtags, like #mondaymotivation. It’s important to use a variety of hashtags in your posts - that way you reach folks from a variety of existing communities that align with yours.

#brandedhashtags

Branded hashtags are those that are specific to your business or brand. This could be a company name, the name of one of your services or products, or maybe just a fun tagline or name you coined for your community. These hashtags don’t really help you grow, as it’s normally something associated directly with your company - but more to drive awareness to a specific topic or to build your community. Also, one helpful tip - make sure to follow your own hashtags, so you see all of the posts regarding your business.

#campaignhashtags

Campaign hashtags are short-term hashtags meant to create buzz around product launches, partnerships, or events. Since all of these campaigns normally have a start and end date, the hashtags are only relevant for a short period of time.

How to find hashtags that fit your niche?

Do you want to know the secret to finding hashtags? Research, research, research.

First, research your audience - to find hashtags that will connect with your audience, just research what hashtags your audience is already using. Obviously, just make sure the hashtag you find aligns with the type of content you plan to publish. If this person is your “ideal audience” and is searching for this type of hashtags, other folks similar to this person might be too!

Next, research your competitors. What hashtags are other successful brands in your niche using? I am not recommending that you just copy and paste their hashtags, but if you see a hashtag that is relevant to your brand - I would dive a little deeper and make sure this hashtag would be beneficial for you to use as well. This also can help get those creative juices flowing - a lot of times when using this method, it sparks other ideas for hashtags to research as well.

You can also research industry leaders in your niche. This is one of the first steps when we are doing research for our client at Creatorly Media. We find leaders in their niche, not only to find out what they’re doing right (and wrong) with their overall Instagram strategy, but it’s a great place to find hashtags. Since these folks are already successful, they must be doing something right - so it’s already good to research their hashtag strategy and use your learnings to benefit your brand.

Lastly, Instagram search bar research. This sounds obvious and simple, but this is one of my favorite ways to research hashtags. You will start by typing a keyword that relates to your business as a hashtag - for example, I could type #socialmedia - but before you open up the hashtag, scroll through the many search suggestions Instagram is providing you.

Using #socialmedia as an example…

I see #socialmediamanager (2 million)

#socialmediamarketing (16 million … ouch)

#socialmediaagency (937K … getting better)

#socialmediacontent (560k … now we are getting somewhere)

#socialmediamarketer (399k … now we are within my comfort zone of 100k-500k)

#socialmediabranding (194K …. looking good)

#socialmediamarketingstrategy (170K … let’s use this one for our further research).

You would take note of all of the hashtags from the long list of suggestions that would be a good fit for your brand - but to take it a step further, you could dig a little deeper in those hashtags you noted down. So, using #socialmediamarketingstrategy to do our further research, you would click open that hashtag and scroll through the posts you see in that hashtag. Once you find one that you feel is similar to your brand, click it open, and locate the area this person placed their hashtags (usually the bottom of the caption or first comment). The post I clicked on used the following hashtags in their post:

#digitalmarketingtips

#instagramgrowth

#instagramforbusiness

#digitalmarketers

#instagramgrowthtips

#socialmediamarketingtools

#instagrammarketingexpert

#instagrammarketing

#smallbusinesses

#marketing101

#marketingtools

#socialmediamarketers

#socialmediamarketingstrategy

#digitalmarketingtips

#instagrammarketers

#socialmediamarketingtips

#digitalmarketingexpert

#digitalmarketingtools

#instagramgrowthexpert

#businesstools

#instagrow

#instagrowth

#marketingtips

#digitalmarketingindia

#instagrambusinesses

#instagramtools

#socialmediatools

#socialmediacoach

#socialmediatips

You can now dig a little deeper into any of these relevant hashtags and first, make sure it’s within the recommended 100k-500k posts within the hashtags, but you could also repeat the search bar step and see what other suggestions Instagram gives you by using one of these hashtags. Using this method, you will discover an endless amount of hashtags in your niche and various content pillars.

Okay, now let’s chat about how many hashtags you should have on each post...

How many hashtags should you use on each post?

Recently Instagram provided some information regarding their tips for using hashtags - and we were a little surprised by some of the details they shared. They recommend only using 3-5 hashtags per post and they encouraged us NOT to use 10-20 hashtags (or more), claiming it would not help get our post additional distribution. Did this blow your mind or is it just me? Pretty much they're saying to STOP using up to 30 hashtags because it's a waste of time. If you want more details on this announcement and more, make sure to check out our Creatorly Media YouTube video, “Do hashtags still work on Instagram” going live this Wednesday.

How to track your hashtags performance?

When it comes to tracking the performance of your hashtags, there is really no perfect way to do this. Though the Instagram insights for each post will tell you how many impressions were from hashtags, they don’t tell you when hashtags provided you those views. Later, which is our preferred scheduling platform, does have a Hashtag Analytic section, but again - they just provide you the stats of the posts that use the hashtag, not how many people found you from the hashtag itself. The best way to track your hashtag performance is to pay attention to the posts that perform the best and evaluate the hashtags you’re using on those posts. You can also do A/B testing - which just means posting two similar posts under the same topic, using one set of hashtags for one post and another set of hashtags for the second post - then compare the results. Did one perform better than the other? Could hashtags be why? Keep testing that group on other A/B testing posts to find out.

In conclusion, I think the best hashtag strategy is a simple strategy - using 3-5 hashtags per post that are relevant for the specific topic of the post. Your main focus should be creating valuable content for your audience and using hashtags as a small way to support your posts.

If you are feeling stuck with your hashtag (or overall Instagram Strategy), we would be happy to do an expert analysis of your Instagram. We have an affordable Instagram Audit service that includes a detailed report card outlining our analysis of your profile, including where you’re winning, and where you can improve. It breaks down every aspect of a successful Instagram, including images, captions, hashtags, your bio, highlights, stories, and more. I will have it linked in the show notes for you.

Thanks for listening and… #yougotthis