Instagram hashtags may seem confusing to you – but not anymore. Here are some tips on how to use them, and what they are all about.
By TLB Contributing Writer: Nirdesh
The use of Instagram hashtags is a subject that many people want to avoid because of how touchy it is. You may be on the platform, but do not like using them, while some people cannot post anything to their followers without placing them – even the posts that may not need hashtags.
When not considering your own feelings on the subject, do you know you can increase engagement on your posts by almost 13 percent when you include them, as opposed to not using them at all?
Because they can be confusing especially for newer users, here are some points you need to know about what they are and how they work. This will ensure your experience on Instagram is a worthwhile one when you use them properly, because of the number of engagements and exposure you can get.
Hashtags: how do they operate?
Once a trademark of twitter, the popularity of hashtags has spread across other social media platforms, and they have now become one of the defining features of Instagram. However, you might not know exactly how they work, so it is important to know this before you use them.
The basic premise of hashtags is to act like a topic organizer, since all posts that contain them, including videos, stories and photos, will come under that theme.
The changes to the algorithm means that you must include hashtags in your posts if you want them to be seen by people outside your follower base, as well as including a caption. The maximum number of hashtags to place in a post should be 30, although many posts work with less hashtags than that. They usually help people to discover you when they type the hashtag name in the search bar.
For instance, if you are into art blogging, you may include something like #traditionalart, #inktober, or something like that. This categorizes the post into specific topics, which other users can find easily if they search for that content.
The types of hashtags
Branded
These use hashtags that are unique to your enterprise, and can include the name of your product, company, or tagline. The basic requirement is it must have something to do with your identity as a business.
Community
These can be broad in their scope, as they will center on a community that has a specific interest.
Campaign
Community hashtags are supposed to last, but these are usually short term. They are also tied to specific campaigns like the launch of a new item.
Why are hashtags important on Instagram?
The introduction of the Instagram algorithm has changed a lot of aspects of Instagram, including the visibility of your posts. Because of the very quick evolution, it is easy to get lost in the crowd – leading to the rise of various services that boost your engagement levels (although many of them are banned). These include services that boost your auto likes for Instagram, which will help you increase profile engagement, and so on.
However, hashtags can achieve all that, even if you do not use other tools. This is why the building of effective strategies on the site will be among the best ways you can get noticed, even by people who do not follow you. In addition, the more specific your hashtags are, the more specific audiences you can reach, which means you get greater engagement levels, more customers, and more followers.
Here are some of the benefits of using them effectively.
You can use them to track your success on Instagram through post insights
This is mostly present if your Instagram profile is a business one. The developers decided to recently release a feature that allows business profiles to easily check the effectiveness of the hashtags they use in their posts, which allows them to tailor their strategies in reaching more users.
When you select ‘view insights’, you are guided to a whole page that shows you the people who saw your post, how they found you, the impressions the post had, as well as its reach.
It allows you to easily follow hashtag content on Instagram
Before the hashtags could be used effectively, Instagram was harder to navigate in terms of posts and finding content relating to a certain topic. However, the situation now is different, because hashtags allow you to easily stay up to date with the latest happenings relating to certain topics, as long as you follow a hashtag that relates to this need (a feature introduced in later versions).
You can actually follow hashtags the same way you can follow accounts, making it possible for you to see updates relating to it.
You can add hashtags to your bio
Recent updates have also added the feature of clickable hashtags on your profile. That also means the building of a more effective bio is now possible, as you can even add your own interests to it and boost your chances of people finding your profile through them.
What makes this so great is because it makes your profile have greater functionality and purpose. In fact, you can use it to promote branded content that you have, and boost your own reach within the community you target on the site. All you need is adding a # sign before the word, and it becomes a link that visitors can use to go to the topic at hand and find out more about you.
You can add them to your stories
This may not be considered a new feature, at least not compared to the others. However, it still helps you boost your discoverability, as other users can search for a specific hashtag and find your content there.
Similar to you putting a hashtag on a regular post, it helps your profile and content become visible even from the search page. When the content is entertaining, chances are you may gain some followers afterwards, and they can engage with you on the post.
Final thoughts
The use of hashtags is a topic that requires you to use them wisely, as they are the tool that helps you get discovered quickly.
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