How to utilise Hashtags in Instagram to get more views and likes
9 Apr 2021 · 5 min
Mark Simpson talks with Instagram expert Chris Taylor about hashtags for hospitality businesses. Taylor recommends using 25-30 hashtags per post and explains why high-volume tags like #entrepreneur disappear fast. The key is mixing tag sizes and posting when your audience is active.
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Recently, I put together a couple of videos from a Q and A that I did with Danny from Optimize My bnb and it went down really well. You loved it, the comments and the messages that I got back. So I dug into my little archive and I managed to find another fantastic Q and A with Chris Taylor, who is an Instagram expert. These videos are going to be packed with information, so please do take note. They're short, sharp, to the point, but they will give you all the tools and the tactics that you need to make Instagram work for you and your hospitality business. So please do stick around. Before we get started, Uplisting are sponsoring this episode. Uplisting. Fantastic pms. They're guaranteed that you will never get a double booking. They are all about the direct bookings. They've recorded some really big numbers. They've got some fantastic people that I know quite well that rave about it. Shamil May down in Birmingham, we've got Ryan Luke, who's now using it up in. Up in Newcastle. Luke Holmes. So again, please, please, please do go check them out. Boostly.co.uk forward/up listing U, P, L, I, S, T I N, G. And without further ado, let's get on with today's lesson. Please, could you just explain the. The hashtag system and exactly how it works on Instagram?
Of course I can. So for those of you that don't know what a hashtag is, and again, like, literally, this is something which takes a little bit of time to get your head around, but basically it's a way for Instagram to categorize content. So the way that I've always explained it previously, it's almost like an index in the back of a nonfiction book where you want to find a particular bit of information. You go to the back of the book and you go, okay, cool, that's page 63. Scroll to page 63 and only that information is there. So basically, it gives you the ability to search for content which you are interested in. Now, as a creator, it's really, really powerful. As a consumer, it gives you the ability to find content that you're interested in. As a creator, it gives you the ability to be found by people that are interested in your content, but don't quite know who you are just yet. So what it does is it basically enables you to get more and more attention to your account and I want you to bring out more followers, therefore more prospects and therefore more customers. So hashtags are really important. You want to be aiming to use depending on how OCD you are with this. I use between 25 and 30 hashtags per post that I do. And if you look at my Instagram account, if you scroll down about 30 to 40 posts, you'll see I've posted this numerous times. But a hashtag pyramid, and the way that the hashtag pyramid works, the way that the algorithm works, and the best way to do it is to give you an example. So if you open up your Instagram apps on your phone, if you're watching on your phone, it might minimize zoom. But don't worry, it shouldn't log you out of the meeting. But if you open up Instagram on your phone and just type in the search bar entrepreneur, just type in that word. Now I don't know how many posts that have gone against that, but I reckon there's around about 6, 60 odd, 70 million posts probably against that thing. Now, maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit more. But if you then click into that hashtag, I'm going to do this with you so I can tell you. So click into that hashtag. So entrepreneur, you type in. Now what that's going to do and what that's going to give you is a load of probably accounts that fit. Now on the third column you'll see there's a section which says tags. If you click on tags, that then shows you that there's 74.5 million posts against the word entrepreneur. Now the most magical thing about all of this is if you click into that, on the right hand side, you'll see a word that says recent. Now the example that I want to give you here is if you click into recent now, you'll see that there's a post, it says 70% of marketers. I don't know if you can see that, but 70% of marketers currently, whatever that says, I don't even know something like that. 70% is a number. Now, I clicked on that 10 seconds ago. If you now come off and just refresh, that post is now, can you see it's down in this bottom hand corner here. That's been 10 seconds. You refresh again and it's gone. So the people that are like hashtagging, the ones which have got 1 million posts or more, you've got the average lifespan of around 30 seconds. Now, with hashtags, to be able to get the ability to trend, you need one thing and one thing only, and that's time. So the more time that someone spends looking at your content, the bigger score that you get.
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