As Instagram touches the 1 billion user mark, it would be wise to start taking your business Instagram profile seriously.
Instagram can help keep your existing customers engaged while giving you the opportunity to attract your target audience simultaneously.
And the implementation of effective Instagram hashtag hacks can help accelerate the entire process.
What are Hashtags?
For the uninitiated, hashtags are words or phrases preceded by the hash (#) symbol. It can also be a combination of some numbers and letters preceded by the “#” symbol. For example, #skincare, #beauty, #play2win, and #top5 are some of the common hashtags created using a combination of letters and numbers.
Hashtags are widely used by brands and content creators to make their content more discoverable. So if you start including relevant hashtags on all your Instagram posts, you’re helping your target audience find, follow, and interact with your business.
Depending on the goals you’re trying to achieve, you can include event hashtags, trending hashtags, branded hashtags, community hashtags, and more in your Instagram hashtag strategy. Whatever hashtags you decide to include, be sure that it aligns with your content and end goal.
Instagram Hashtag Hacks You Cannot Afford to Miss
If you’ve just created your business Instagram profile and are unaware of ways to drive relevant profile views and follows, implement the following evergreen Instagram hashtag hacks for visible results.
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Include Less Popular, but Niche-Relevant Hashtags
A common Instagram hashtag mistake some businesses make is adding any random hashtag to their post that is either popular or trending.
While hashtag popularity indicates high search volume or demand, it doesn’t necessarily translate to relevance. Popular hashtags have too many posts vying to get users’ attention, which often reduces the visibility prospects of new Instagram accounts.
If you want your posts to get noticed, start including less popular yet highly-relevant hashtags. For example, if your business sells skincare products, you may be tempted to add only popular hashtags like #skincare (87+ million posts), #skincareroutine (19+ million posts), etc., which may not deliver promising outcome.
But if you include hashtags like #skincarethatworks (198.4k+ posts), #skincaretip (259.2k+ posts), #skincarecollection (190.6k+ posts), or other similar hashtags along with a few popular hashtags, the results can be way better.
For best results, create a hashtag set that includes your brand hashtag, two to three popular hashtags, and around five to six less popular yet highly relevant hashtags. This is an excellent Instagram hashtag hack that has worked for most profiles.
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Incorporate Trending Hashtags in Your Posts
Discussions around trending topics are often short-lived, but they can bring massive traction to your profile if you manage to capitalize it correctly.
Including trending hashtags in your posts will not only increase its visibility but will also keep your business relevant in front of your audience. It can also be an incredible way to connect with your target audience on the platform, as long as you capitalize on trends that are relevant to your brand and Instagram feed.
To generate maximum benefit from this Instagram hashtag trick, always take time to research about the trend to prevent using it irresponsibly.
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Use Branded Hashtags
Any startup that wants to create a community around its brand should start using branded hashtags in all its Instagram posts.
Branded hashtags are unique and help people easily find, follow, and connect with their favorite brands on social media. As hashtags are clickable, users can click on your branded hashtag to discover all your brand posts in a single place.
While most businesses use their exact brand name to create branded hashtags, you can also consider creating one using your brand name variations.
When creating branded hashtags, always remember to keep them short yet memorable and relevant. You should always be consistent with your branded hashtags not only on Instagram but also on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms for best results.
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Include Relevant Hashtags in Instagram Stories
Putting at least two Instagram stories a day is a great way to increase the chances of being found by new users who may be interested in your products/services.
The more you tell about your brand and offerings via Instagram stories, the more people will know about you. To ensure more Instagram users view your stories, you should add relevant hashtags. When adding the hashtags, make sure the story doesn’t get stuffed with too many hashtags, as it can easily turn off people, giving your content a spammy look.
A great Instagram hashtag hack to overcome this problem is by hiding the story hashtags by pasting an emoji or sticker over them.
If you’re adding hashtag stickers on your Instagram story, you can minimize its appearance by changing its background from white to semi-transparent. These simple yet effective hashtag hacks can help boost your visibility without turning off the users.
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Make Multiple Hashtag Sets for Trial & Error
All Instagram business profile owners can view insights of their accounts. These insights give you details about the total number of profile visits, new followers, account reach, and other important details during a particular duration.
Of all the important insights, Instagram lets you know the impressions earned via hashtags. Though you cannot know which hashtag brought the maximum impressions, you can get an idea of which hashtags worked best for your profile by checking the insights of individual posts.
It is a tedious process, but the data collected from this method will help you choose the right hashtags. Once you’ve listed down all the hashtags from best-performing posts, use them to create multiple hashtag sets. The more you experiment with these sets, the closer you’ll get to the best hashtags.
Conclusion
The right Instagram hashtag strategy can help you achieve many of your social media marketing goals. Whether you want to increase your brand awareness or inform people about your new product launch, the Instagram hashtag hacks shared above can help you achieve all this. To make your work easier, you can take the help of social media automation tools to plan and schedule your Instagram posts. But to ensure you get impressive results, you have to be consistent with your efforts.
