Instagram hashtags enables you get your posts found by other Instagram users. If you know how to use hashtags on Instagram correctly, you can get thousands of new post views, profile visits, likes and followers.
How Instagram hashtags works
Hashtags are words which are used to find posts on Instagram. For example, if you want to find videos on Instagram which are related to electronic music, you could search #electronicmusic or #edm.
When you make a search, Instagram will look all the pictures and videos which includes the search term you used. However, since Instagram contains millions of pictures and videos it can’t show you all the results.
Therefore Instagram algorithms will filter the results it will try to show you the most relevant results for you. This is why you need to know how to use correctly Instagram hashtags when you are uploading content.
If you are not using correct hashtags on Instagram, not many people will see your posts.
How to find good hashtags
The easiest way to find hashtags is to look for other users pictures and videos and see what hashtags they are using. For example, if you are about to upload a video of you playing a guitar, look for similar content and see what hashtags they are using.
However, you should not just copy all the hashtags other people are using. This is because some hashtags are much more competitive than others.
Let’s say that you are about to upload a music video on Instagram of you playing a guitar. Now the most obvious hashtags to use would be something like #music or #guitar.
Those hashtags are a good example of highly competitive hashtags. If you search for those hashtags on Instagram you will get millions of results because they are so often used.
This is why you want to avoid using too much highly competitive hashtags because no one can find your posts under the millions of other posts using the same hashtags.
Another way of coming up with good hashtags is to figure out your target audience. If your target audience consists of music producers, for example, you should include music words which are related to your content and music niche you are in.
Which Instagram hashtags are best for you
When you are choosing your hashtags there are couple of things for you to think about. The first thing is the hashtag competitiveness we just talk about. You can see which hashtags are highly used simply by searching them on Instagram.
Just write the word on your Instagram search and it will automatically show you many posts are using that word. The higher the number is to more competitive the hashtag is. Here are some general guidelines about hashtag competitiveness:
- Less than 1k search results: not competitive
- 1k-5k search results: very low competitive
- 5k-50k search results: low competitive
- 50k-125k search results: medium competitive
- 125k-1 million search results: highly competitive
- Over 1 million search results: super competitive
So when you are selecting your hashtags it all comes to down choosing a right combination of different difficulty hashtags. If you don’t have much following you want to choose more lesser difficult hashtags. This increases your chances to get your posts seen.
When you get more followers you can add more medium and highly competitive hashtags. However, you should always include some hashtags from all of the different difficulties. This way you ensure that your posts have a chance to get seen by a much wider audience.
Let’s say than you have 500 followers on Instagram. I would recommend to mostly include low, very low and not competitive hashtags. In this case about 80% of your hashtags should be low, very low and not competitive and other 20% medium, high or super competitive.
How many hashtags you need
Instagram allows you to add maximum of 30 hashtags to your posts. You should always add about 25-30 hashtags to maximize your chances to get you post seen as many people as possible.
There are 2 ways of adding hashtags to your posts. You can either add them directly to your posts when you are writing the description or you can add them by commenting them to your own picture or video once you have uploaded it.
Both methods works the same way so it’s really up to you which one you use. I like to include the hashtags on the post itself by leaving them last on the description.
If your actual description is very short it can look messy if it mostly consists of your hashtags. Then I would suggest to add them as a comment once you have upload the post.
Which Instagram hashtags you should not use
There are some hashtags you should generally avoid using. These hashtags are usually very generic adjectives (amazing, incredible, best), shady or abusive words, swearing words and phrases which are just used to get more followers.
For example, don’t use hashtag such as follow4follow. Instagram algorithms are smart and they will notice if you are trying to trick or abuse the system just to get followers quickly.
The best thing to do when adding hashtags is to be as genuine as possible. Don’t try to trick the algorithms, you will only get yourself in trouble in the long run.