While the world of social media is becoming harder and harder for brands to navigate, hashtags are still a tried and true way of attracting views to your brand. Today the world of social media feels all-consuming and difficult to navigate for people who don’t spend all of their time on it.
Between TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter, social media can feel like a jungle. Focusing on the steadiness and effectiveness of hashtags on Instagram can help brands cut through the noise when trying to attract eyes to their brand’s Instagram account.
In this article we will explain how hashtags work on Instagram, how to write Instagram captions with hashtags, the top hashtags on the platform, and the best Instagram hashtags to use in order to attract views to your brand.
How Hashtags Work on Instagram
When you write an Instagram caption, hashtags are used to categorize the posts based on their content. Hashtags can be written at any point throughout your caption, but for readability and aesthetic reasons they typically look best at the end. You can’t use special characters in hashtags. It’s important to note that if someone has a private profile instead of a public profile, their posts won’t show up in other people’s searches.
For example, if your content is centered around cooking and you post a picture of you chopping vegetables, you might use hashtags like #foodprep, #vegetables, and #homecooking. We came across the below post by searching the hashtag #cookingathome.
Hashtags are designed to help users discover content. The user sets the intention for what they’re looking for by the hashtags they search. The algorithm shows them content that corresponds to the hashtag they searched.
Writing Instagram Captions with Hashtags
When creating captions on Instagram, you can add up to thirty hashtags. You can add up to ten hashtags on Instagram stories. This provides a lot of space for you to elaborately describe your post and potentially draw in a wide audience. However, keeping in mind that hashtags are designed for user discovery, you should only be using hashtags that are truly relevant to your brand and what you’re posting.
Spamming users with hashtags that aren’t relevant to your content will only hinder your credibility on the platform. It also wastes time for you and your audience because you’re drawing in people whose interests aren’t matched with your content.
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If you’re not sure where to start, you can come up with your first hashtags by simply describing what your post is about. After you’ve described the obvious aspects of your post, move onto the bigger picture by tagging what’s not so obvious. This is where you could list things like if your business is female-owned, if you use green practices, etc.
Using Popular Hashtags on Instagram
Your captions should include a mix of popular and niche hashtags. Some of the most popular hashtags on Instagram are #love, #happy, and #photooftheday. Including these hashtags in your captions gives your posts the potential of finding a large audience. You’ll be competing with a lot of other posts for their attention, but it does put you in front of a large number of accounts.
Food Hashtags and Travel Hashtags
Some of the biggest communities on Instagram revolve around food hashtags and travel hashtags. These are very popular categories to create content around because food and travel are very visually appealing.
Popular food hashtags include #foodie, #instafood, and #foodpics. Popular travel hashtags include #travelgram, #travelphotography, and #traveldiary. If food or travel hashtags are relevant to your brand, they can provide an opportunity to reach the large communities they correspond to.
Popular Hashtags
Other popular hashtags you can take advantage of are ones that correspond to different events both daily and annually. Examples of daily hashtags include #MondayMotivation, #TuesdayTip, and #FeatureFriday.
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Just about every day there is a new holiday being celebrated, like National Siblings Day, National Pretzel Day, and National Tell a Story Day. Find a calendar that lists all of these different holidays throughout the world and take advantage of the ones that make sense for your brand.
Niche Hashtags
Niche hashtags are some of the best Instagram hashtags to use in order to attract views to your brand. Your Instagram captions should also include niche hashtags that target a specific audience. Consider the niche communities your brand serves.
You know who your target audience is outside of Instagram- what niche communities do they belong to? Your hashtag strategy should tap into those niche communities on Instagram too. A niche food hashtag example is #glutenfreefood. A niche travel hashtag example is #solotravel.
While these audiences are smaller by the numbers, they are typically more involved and engaged than their larger counterparts. Using a combination of the top hashtags on Instagram and more niche hashtags will help your brand reach a wider audience while still maintaining its engagement.
The Best Hashtags for Your Brand
In addition to using the top hashtags on Instagram in your captions, your social media strategy should also include hashtags that are specific to your brand and its campaigns. If you don’t have one already, you’ll want to create a hashtag that’s specific to just your brand that you will put in every single one of your captions.
This provides a clear way for customers to get involved. If customers know your brand specific hashtag, they can add that to their captions when they post about you. If someone searches your hashtag, all of your content will come up, including your customer’s content about you.
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When you create social media campaigns centered around new product launches or the holiday shopping season, you’ll also want a campaign specific hashtag. This signals to the customer that a special promotion is happening. It prompts them to pay closer attention and potentially get involved in the campaign. In the example below, an account is participating in Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign.
Conclusion
Instagram hashtags can be used in both captions and stories, and they categorize your posts based on their content. In captions, typically hashtags look best when placed at the end. Special characters cannot be used in hashtags. Also, if a user’s profile is set to private instead of public, their posts won’t show in other people’s search results.
You can add up to ten hashtags on Instagram stories and up to thirty hashtags in captions. This is a big opportunity for you to describe your brand and its content in full, but you still need to be careful of spamming users with irrelevant hashtags. This will only tamper your credibility among Instagram users.
You’ll want to use a mix of the top hashtags on Instagram and hashtags that cater to niche audiences. This will put your brand in front of large, general audiences, and smaller audiences that are highly engaged. Hashtags specific to your brand and its social media campaigns are also important because they’re crucial for creating brand awareness and engaging your customers.
This guide to the best hashtags to use in order to attract views to your brand is designed to help your brand’s social media strategy find familiar ground on Instagram. Go forth and conquer!
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