Hashtags on Instagram;Complete Guide.How To Use Hashtags on Instagram.If you want the publications you share on social networks to reach more people and not just your followers, you should use hashtags. But it is not enough to put the four or five hashtags that cross your mind and that’s it, but you must study well which are the most suitable hashtags for the content you are sharing and what is the ideal number of hashtags to put in each social network.
Hashtags on Instagram;Complete Guide.
What is a hashtag?
A hashtag is a tag that is used to group content of the same subject on different social networks.Its structure is always the same: the # symbol followed by one or more words (or numbers) written without any space between them.These tags can be used on any social network, but on Instagram they are very important since you have the ability to follow hashtags in the same way that you follow other people.
What are hashtags for?
Hashtags are mainly used to tag images or videos of similar topics and that users who are interested in that topic can easily and quickly find publications about it.
But it can also be used to:
- Increase the visibility of your profile and the reach of your publications , reaching users who are looking for that hashtag and not just your followers.
- Get more “likes” , since by increasing the reach of your followers, if you have shared quality content, you will get more interactions with users who do not follow you.
- Create conversations and follow them easily , since by monitoring the hashtag that you have created or used you will be able to see the opinion of all your followers and other users who are interested in a specific topic.
- Promote an event, contest, product, service or news .
- Support causes or events .
- Find inspiration and useful information on a specific topic.
How many hashtags does Instagram allow?
On Instagram, you can use up to 30 hashtags in each post .It is not necessary that you add the 30 hashtags in all your publications, but rather select the appropriate hashtags (be it 5, 10, 16, 23 or 29) for each of your publications, taking into account that those tags coincide with the content of the image (or video) and the text that you have shared with it.
In the case of stories , you can put up to 10 hashtags , but you must bear in mind that the space is limited, so I do not recommend that you fill your story with hashtags.
If you don’t know which hashtags to choose, don’t worry, I’m going to show you how I choose which tags to put on my posts.
What hashtags to put on Instagram?
Before selecting the hashtags you have to take into account that you should not always use the same ones and in the same order , since the Instagram algorithm could consider that you are doing SPAM and block you, so that your publication stops appearing in the list of Posts that have been shared with that tag.Although your content is always of the same theme, each content is different and therefore, that must also be reflected in your hashtags.
Knowing this, we are going to see which hashtags to select to use in your publications.
I like to have a text document with several hashtags to choose the most suitable for each of the images or videos that I share. In this way, I don’t have to waste time looking for each of the hashtags that I’m going to use, but I go to my list and if I need any more, I already look for it.
In that document, I group the hashtags according to topic. For instance:
- Trending hashtags . It is important that you know which are the most important days in your country or in your sector to share special content on those days.
- Hashtags of your sector. Those keywords that are often used in your sector and that define your business or company.
- Hashtags of your target audience. Those words that have to do with your target audience on Instagram and that they will surely follow.
- Hashtags of your content. That have to do with the type of content you usually share (tips, tricks, news, etc.) or with the content itself.
- Hashtags of your product or service. Your products or services can also be hashtags that you usually use.
- Location hashtags . And by that, I mean as much a city or country as if you are on the beach, in a park or wherever.
- Community hashtags . There are many communities, like the Igers, that share other people’s content. Find which ones are the most relevant to you and share content with their hashtags from time to time (no need to bombard them either).
- Own hashtags , that you have created for your brand.
In addition, you must also take into account the size of these. An example of classification would be:
- Hashtags from more than 1 million posts are widely used hashtags and therefore it is difficult to appear in the featured section of that hashtags and your post will quickly get buried by new content that is shared.
- Hashtags between 500,000 and 1,000,000 posts are big hashtags, but not as big as the old group.
- Hashtags between 100,000 and 500,000 posts are medium hashtags that can be more accessible.
- Hashtags between 10,000 and 100,000 posts are small hashtags that are very interesting because they have a good volume and are usually more specific.
- Hashtags between 1,000 and 10,000 posts are very small hashtags, so if they are not very interesting for your brand and have to do with your business and the content you share, they may not be worth it.
Hashtags are not case sensitive, that is, the hashtag #CommunityManager and #communitymanager are the same, but the former is more readable for the user.As for accents, there is a difference and the version without accents is usually used more. For example, the hashtag # photograph has fewer publications than the hashtag #fotografia .
When I go to select the hashtags that I am going to use, I look at all of the hashtags that I have on my list which are the ones that I think most go with the image or video that I am going to share . I try to take hashtags from different groups and different sizes and mix them up so that they come out different combinations and in a different order.In the most used hashtags, your content will disappear soon since there will be new content that will be put in front of yours but, in the hashtags that are not used as much, your content will remain for a longer time.Also, you have to keep in mind that, if you sell services or products, it is better that you segment to try to reach your target audience to use a lot of generic hashtags that do not bring you quality visits.
How to create hashtags on Instagram?
If you want to create quality and relevant content so that users can easily follow it, you can create a hashtag.To do this, I recommend that you think of several hashtags that may be relevant to the type of content you want to share and look for it on Instagram.
If no search appears, no one has used that tag before and you can use it for your content. If it appears to you, I recommend that before using it you take a look at the publications that there are, since there may be images or videos that you do not want to be related to your brand.
In addition, you have to take into account:
- It should be easy to remember , so users can easily search for it or post with that hashtag without having to search for it every time.
- It must be according to your brand and the theme of the publications.
- It must be original and easy to understand .
- It should not have any spelling mistakes .
You must bear in mind that anyone can use the hashtags you create, no matter how much they are from your brand or even contain your brand name or yours.
The best hashtags for Instagram
There is no generic list of best hashtags for Instagram, because what you have to look for are the hashtags that really interest you.My recommendation is that you do a study of hashtags by searching in the Instagram search engine itself for the keywords that have to do with the different groups that I have mentioned in the section on “what hashtags to put?” of this same article and classify it according to its size (number of publications).
You can do it in any type of document: in the notes on your mobile, in a spreadsheet, in a text document, in applications that you use and have the option,And remember that it is not a static list, but that you must search from time to time for new interesting hashtags and checking that the ones you have used are really still interesting for your account.
How to know if a hashtag is penalized?
On Instagram there are some hashtags that are penalized and using them, even if you don’t know them, can lead to a penalty or less visibility in your content.
These hashtags are usually penalized for breaking Instagram rules and can be penalized temporarily or permanently:
- The hashtags permanently penalized are hashtags that have to do with sex, drugs, violence, eating disorders and related issues that are not permitted by the rules of this social network. These hashtags, if you enter them in the Instagram search engine, you will see that they do not appear and you cannot access the page of this hashtag.
- The hashtags penalized temporarily are hashtags that have recently been reported by users or are being included in some content that Instagram believes that non – compliant. In this case, they do appear in the search engine but upon entering you will see a message that specifies it.
So that you know how it looks inside Instagram, here I share a publication of my Instagram account in which I share a capture of the two cases https://www.instagram.com/p/B88z6dwC9Cy/
Ideally, you should be looking for your hashtags with certain periodicity within the Instagram search engine to avoid sharing new content with penalized hashtags , although there are also tools that obtain the list of penalized hashtags (be careful, not all of them are recently updated so it may it appears that a hashtag is temporarily penalized when it is no longer so).
Further down, in the hashtag tool section, I leave you the one that I usually consult (which I tell you since it is not very up-to-date, but it helps you to know which hashtags are permanently penalized).
Also, if you are going to do a giveaway on Instagram, you should avoid hashtags that contain the word “giveaway” since they are the ones used by hackers to create a new account by impersonating your identity and send a private message to all users who have participated in your raffle telling them that they have been winners and asking for information such as the bank account to scam them.
Hashtag tools for Instagram.
There are many tools and applications that help you find hashtags to share in your posts.
I have used these tools to search for new hashtags, but I recommend that before using them you look for those hashtags on Instagram and, above all, that you do not use those hashtags just because the application says so, but because you consider that they are relevant and that they have to see with your post.
We are going to see some tools and mobile applications that you can use to find hashtags for Instagram.
IQ Hashtags.
The IQ Hashtag online tool is a very complete tool that I highly recommend using when doing your study of hashstags.
It allows you:
- Search for hashtags by selecting the language you want (for example, even if the tool is in English, you can select Spanish when doing the study so that it will look for hashtags in that language).
- Create hashtag listings in the tool itself.
- Analyze the hashtags that you have shared on your Instagram account or other accounts.
- Check if any hashtag is banned .
Display Purpose
The online Display Purpose tool is free and I really like it because it gives you three options:
- You can enter a hashtag and the program will give you a series of hashtags that are often used together with the one you just entered.
- You can see which hashtags are used the most in your city, including the percentage of each age range that uses it, which gender uses it the most, or which language .
- Or you can enter a hashtag and see a graphic linking the hashtags used alongside that hashtag.
All Hashtag.
The free online tool All Hashtag has a search engine with three options: Top, random and live. If you look for a hashtag in this tool it will give you several listings:
- The best hashtags that contain the keyword.
- Hashtags similar to the one you have entered.
- Keywords similar to the hashtag you have entered.
Metricool.
Whoever follows my blog knows that I love this tool for the analytics part. In Metricool you can control which hashtags work best for you.
To see it, you simply have to access your account and click on the Instagram section. On that same page, at the end, you will find the interactions that your publications have had according to the hashtag you have used , so that you can see which ones are working best for you.
And you can also know which are the hashtags most used by your competition , something that can also help you define or have more ideas about which hashtags to use.
Instavast Free Tools.
The online tool Instavast does not tell you which hashtags to use, but which are the hashtags that you should not use because they are prohibited .
On its website, you will be able to see a list, in alphabetical order, of the hashtags that are temporarily banned or that are completely banned.
Be careful, if you use tools like this it is very important that you look at the last update date.
Hashtag Expert.
The Hashtag Expert mobile application for iOS when you enter a hashtag, it gives you a list of hashtags that are usually used together with the hashtag you are looking for and you also have categories with a list of the most used hashtags.
Leetags.
This free mobile application for iOS and Android allows you to search for hashtags in Spanish , select the most used hashtags according to categories and add hashtags to favorites.
There are some options that are paid, for example, it does not show the hashtags of all the available categories, only those of the most popular categories, physical and mental activities, animals, nature, seasons, mood, family, drinks, transport, musical genres and dances and musical instruments.
Conclusions.
If you use the hashtags properly in your Instagram posts, you will see that their visibility increases and new users begin to follow you, in addition to having “likes” from users who do not follow you.