Patrick Biddiscombe and Leslie Green from HubSpot break down Instagram hashtag strategy. Use 3-5 hashtags per post instead of the maximum 30. Focus on niche and location-specific tags over broad ones, and check your post Insights to see which ones actually drive impressions.
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In this video, I'm going to share some Instagram hashtag tips and tricks that people won't tell you. I even got to chat with one of HubSpot's social media strategists and she gave me some expert advice that you don't want to miss. Make sure to stick around till the end, because I'm going to show you guys one of my favorite websites that will make your life a lot easier when creating hashtags. So last year, Instagram's Creators account posted this right here sharing hashtag do's and don'ts for the platform. Creators can use up to 30 hashtags per post, but this post from them suggested that you should stick to using three to five. Although Instagram advises that people stick to three to five hashtags, many creators on the platform have claimed that the more hashtags they use, the more engagement their posts get. Leslie Green, a social media strategist at HubSpot, says jam packing your posts with irrelevant, spammy or oversaturated hashtags isn't going to bring the reach results you're hoping for. If you want to implement a hashtag strategy, step one is to do your research and find hashtags that your target audience is engaging with. Hashtags can be location based, branded, industry specific, community driven, or descriptive. In 2022, the Instagram algorithm shows us that using quality hashtags really matters for visibility and growth on the platform. So don't even waste your time using random hashtags. Using specific hashtags that relate to your posts help the algorithm place that content in front of the people that are actually searching for it. If you're trying to grow your account fast, it's important that you're using hashtags in all of your posts and Instagram stories. I even asked Leslie if they really make a difference in a post performance, and she yep, Instagram hashtags are still a very effective way to get more eyeballs and engagement on your posts. Hashtags are a reference for the Instagram algorithm to categorize your content and serve it to relevant users who may be interested in engaging. So for each post, you should make a list of up to 30 hashtags that are relevant to that post. You won't be using all 30 hashtags in each post, but it's good to have a list of relevant quality hashtags that you can pick and choose from. This is something HubSpot's Instagram training course dives deeper on. I'll have it linked down below for you guys, but it's a great course for learning the best marketing practices to grow your account fast. And it will also teach you how to use hashtags more strategically to get more eyeballs on your content. For stories, you can use up to 10 hashtags and pro Tip Minimize the text and move it off the screen so that your viewers won't see your hashtags in the frame. The first step when creating your hashtags is to identify your niche. If your niche is food, then your list should only have food related hashtags. I recommend staying away from very broad and competitive hashtags that millions of people are using already. For example, if your posts are all about vegan food, then using vegan recipes rather than just hashtag food will better target the right audience. A question many people have is can you use the same list of hashtags under each post? And the answer is no, because Instagram could read this as spam. Hashtags should be unique to the theme of each post, but if you have a branded hashtag that's relevant to the majority of your posts, it's a okay to categorize your posts with it. Creating a list of hashtags for every post can be a bit time consuming, so a great tool that I've used before to help me come up with hashtags when I can't think of many is a website called best hashtags.com. this is just one tool out of hundreds available online, but sticking with the vegan niche here, if I was posting a vegan cake and wanted some hashtag ideas, I would type in vegan cake in the search bar and the results show you the best trending hashtags that you can use on your post that'll help you boost your engagement. Another great way to find relevant hashtags for your posts is to use Instagram itself. If you go on the Explore page and type in your keyword so mine is vegan cake, then press Search and then tags. It'll show you a long list of the trending hashtags people are using and how many posts use each hashtag according to HubSpot's Instagram engagement report. It's important to find a sweet spot when choosing your hashtags. You don't want hashtags with low competition because your post won't get seen, but you also don't want extremely high competition either. When it comes to social media, it's important to work smarter, not harder. And the way that I like to do that is by taking advantage of all the free tools that I can HubSpot's 2022 Instagram engagement report is filled with information on all things Instagram, one of them being Using hashtags the right way. Creating your hashtag strategy will be so much easier with this tool because it gives you detailed information from experts on what actually works. Make sure to download it. The link is in the description box down below. The last tip I want to mention is optimizing your hashtags for search. Another post from Instagram's Creators account says that if you want your post to be found, search, you have to include the hashtags in your caption and not in your comments. Many people make this mistake because they want to hide their hashtags in the comments, but make sure you're not doing this if you want your content to be found. A great way to see if your hashtags are bringing in traffic to your page is to check your post Insights. Anyone can check this as long as you change your page from a personal account to a business account. Instagram doesn't show you which hashtags specifically are the most effective, but you'll be able to see how they're contributing to your impressions overall. Whether you're trying to grow your business account or your personal account, if you have a clear understanding of what your industry niche is and who the target audience is that you want to attract, you'll be able to create a successful Instagram hashtag strategy with the tips and tools that I've talked about in this video. Make sure you don't forget to check out the links down below to the HubSpot Instagram Training Course and the 2022 Instagram Engagement Report. If you guys have any questions, make sure to comment them down below. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time by I can't find this client info have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned, no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot grow better.
