How to Find the Most Popular Instagram Hashtags and Connect with New Followers

Instagram Hashtags

Using the right Instagram hashtags can help you extend your reach, engage your audience, and even boost your brand. In order to get each of these distinct benefits, however, you need to have specific strategies in place.

This is something that’s often mystified brands, as it can be difficult to notice trends and patterns at first glance. Hashtag strategies aren’t one-size-fits-all, which can cause even more confusion for businesses trying to figure it out for themselves.

Today, we're sharing how to create an effective hashtag strategy for your Instagram account, including hashtag research, how to implement and develop hashtag strategies, and even specific hashtags you should add to your roster based on your business’s goals.

How hashtags work on Instagram

Hashtags on Instagram can be attached to posts and become clickable phrases and topics. Any word or phrase can be turned into a working hashtag, as long as it has the # placed in front of it.

When users click on a hashtag, they’re taken to its discover feed, which shows all the public content attached to it. People will click on or search for hashtags they’re interested in as a way of finding content on Instagram.

Since hashtags are used with an intent to discover content, the right hashtags can put you in front of your target audience, even if they haven’t connected with you before. Recognizing the importance of hashtags on the platform, Instagram has expanded the functionality of hashtags. Brands can now add clickable hashtags to the profile section of Instagram bios

Using hashtags to connect with your audience

Understanding which hashtags you should use is a crucial part of developing a strong hashtag strategy that maximizes your reach and increases engagement. There are different types of hashtags that each serve a purpose, and any strong strategy incorporates a combination of them.

     

Branded hashtags

These should be listed in your profile bio, and are exclusive to your specific store. They can be used to build brand awareness, and you can encourage users to share user-generated content using them. Examples include Harper Wilde’s #LiftUpTheGirls, Shwood Eyewear’s #shwoodshop, and So Worth Loving’s #swlfamily.

Location-based hashtags

This won’t apply to all ecommerce merchants, but if you have products that would appeal to local audiences, use it to your advantage. Do you have novelty mugs that feature different states? Use #FloridaLife or #NewYorkDrinks to connect with the right audience.

Entertainment hashtags

These hashtags aren’t meant to grow your audience, they’re meant to expand on the relationship with the audience you already have. These phrases often have little to do with a brand itself, and a lot to do with the situation in the specific post. In the example below, #shopitlikeithot and #getitgirl are both entertainment-focused.

Trending hashtags

Hashtags go in and out of favor just like styles of clothing and slang. Sometimes trending hashtags are just really popular hashtags people are using at the time, which have surged in popularity for some reason. In many cases though, they’ll have more to do with current events.

Maybe Apple has announced a new version of the iPhone, or it’s election day somewhere in the country. These hashtags won’t give you evergreen results, but they can yield meaningful returns in reach and interest when used correctly.

Niche hashtags

Certain products have audiences with niche interests. People who are buying their own virtual reality systems, for example, are likely to be interested in all the latest technology. Customers who are interested in healthy eating may search for phrases like #organic or #eatinggreen. Use niche-specific hashtags to connect with a highly relevant audience.

Bremont does this exceptionally well in the example below. They use hashtags like #luxury and #watchoftheday, knowing that these niche hashtags could connect them with their target audience.

Which types of hashtags should I use?

Not all ecommerce businesses will benefit from every type of hashtag.

A merchant with national or international reach may not have a reason to use location-based hashtags, for example, and B2B merchants with a strictly professional voice may not use a lot of the entertaining hashtags. That’s fine. Adopt the ones that will work best for your brand and your audience.

How many hashtags should I be using?

You can use up to thirty hashtags on a single Instagram post. That answers how many you can use, but not how many you should use, which can be quite different.

There’s lots of research on this topic and various findings. A fairly consistent takeaway is that you should definitely be using a few hashtags (as in more than one) on every post. Instagram posts with hashtags receive 70% more likes, according to a study by Agorapulse.As for precisely how many hashtags work best, the data is inconsistent. Some marketers swear by using just two hashtags, while others say use all thirty. In reality, the sweet spot for a single post may only be something you can uncover through testing

Instagram hashtag tools: Streamline your process

Whether you’re shooting for six hashtags or thirty, it can be time-consuming to enter in that many characters, especially since autocorrect can’t save you. Ask any social media manager, and we’ll tell you it’s not our favorite thing in world.

Fortunately, there are tools that can streamline the process. These are the ones I recommend:

• PreviewApp, which allows you to save groups of hashtags to the app, apply them to content, and then export the posts right to Instagram— hashtags and all. They’ll also test your hashtags and let you know which are getting you the most results.
• Later, whose Saved Captions feature lets you apply captions and their hashtags to new posts. You’ll want to change up the hashtags, but it can save you a lot of time if you’re using a handful of them over again.
• Tag for Likes Pro, which can help you find, copy, and paste Instagram hashtags on a mobile device. You can create custom lists containing multiple hashtags and then copy them right to Instagram.

If you aren’t willing to invest in a tool just for this purpose, the more affordable route may be to use a general social media tool. You can keep a document of different hashtags and use social media scheduling software like Agorapulse, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social. You can create the posts on your desktop, copying and pasting hashtags or groups of hashtags to the caption as needed. Since all of these tools can now post directly to Instagram for you, this can save you a few steps.

Banned hashtags: The dark side of Instagram

Did you know that there are such things as banned hashtags on Instagram? They aren’t even swear words and outright obscenities, either—though those definitely make the list.

Instagram routinely “bans” hashtags that they detect are frequently used alongside some sort of illicit content. Some of these aren’t surprising, like #nasty, but others like #fitnessgirls and #tgif could be used for perfectly innocent reasons. Instagram won’t post new content to a banned hashtag’s feeds, if the feed even stays up at all.

Hashtags can be banned permanently or temporarily, and when you use them, your posts could be shadowbanned. This means that they may not show up in your followers’ feeds, and they may not appear when users search for other hashtags attached to the post, too. All in all, using a single banned hashtag can unravel all the work you did on a single post.

When compiling your lists of hashtags that you want to use, check out the full list of hashtags that have been banned in Instagram.

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