Developing the right hashtag strategy is an effective and easy method to grow your Instagram and reach more people! Hashtags can help you to develop a targeted, online community and encourage people to interact with your profile.
But, what exactly is a hashtag on Instagram, and how can you use them effectively to get more reach and engagement on your posts?
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What is a Hashtag?
A hashtag is a combination of letters, numbers, and/or emojis preceded by the # symbol. It helps categorize your content and make it more discoverable, searchable, and clickable.
So when hashtags are strategically used, these advantages could help your profile to increase Instagram reach and impressions, boost brand recognition, target a specific demographic, and enhance your SEO.
But, not all hashtags can be seen and can appeal to your target audience. You can use popular hashtags, micro or small, and niche-specific keywords to promote your content and get your visibility to skyrocket.
Essentially, your hashtag strategy should be strategic by means of using the most effective Instagram hashtags relevant to you. So, here are the categories of hashtags to help you pick yours and get the best results for your profile:
Micro Hashtags
These hashtags have less than 100,000 posts. It will be easy to get in the top posts, but the reach of your post will be much lower!
Nevertheless, you can use a few micro hashtags to get super targeted eyes on your posts. This can work well for location specific accounts.
Small Hashtags
The small hashtag category has less than 300,000 posts. So, using hashtags under this category is great for niche but thriving communities as you can easily be seen by more people, and you don’t have too much competition.
This is a great category to use when you don’t get too much engagement. If that’s you, test this category the most and review if you are reaching the top posts. If you do, then try adding more medium-sized hashtags!
Medium Hashtags
On the other hand, this category has 300,000 to 1M posts. It is neither too small nor too big, it’s just right, which leads most users to often use it.
These hashtags can be the sweet spot, and we recommend using at least 10 of these in every post. But remember, the more relevant to your post the better!
Large Hashtags
Now, when it comes to large-scale hashtags, these have 1M-10M posts. These hashtags are trendy and popular. But, the chances of being seen are smaller than when you use medium hashtags.
It’s worth mentioning that a good percentage of likes you get from using these hashtags could be bots, and we don’t want those!
Huge Hashtags
Finally, these gigantic hashtags have over 10M posts. These are used by a lot of people, and regularly. This means there’s a lot of competition when you use these kinds of hashtags. Your post will get lost in the noise, and the audience will be much less targeted.
So, it’s wiser not to use them too much!
You can use up to 30 hashtags in every post and up to 10 hashtags on an Instagram Story! If you’re trying to grow your account, we highly recommend carefully selecting your hashtags and testing the right mix of micro to huge Instagram hashtags for the best results.
