Clients constantly ask me how to use hashtags to increase their reach on social and If they are really necessary to grow their profile. The answer is yes! An effective hashtag strategy will help your content reach more eyeballs, but, with so much information floating around out there how do you know what the right process is to find hashtags that work?!
If you stay until the end of this article you will have the strategy and steps to creating hashtag groups that will help you get more likes, followers, and engagement! If you would like more information on how to grow on Instagram make sure to click the link below to download my free Instagram Resource Bundle.
First things first, we are going to need to know what a hashtag is. A hashtag is a combination of letters and numbers preceded by the pound sign. They categorize content and make it more discoverable. So anyone who clicks on a hashtag or searches for it will see a page with all the posts tagged with it.
How high up on a hashtag page your post appears depends on a couple of things.
- How often that hashtag is used
- How much engagement your post has (So how many likes, comments, shares) it has.
- When you shared it
- And the strength of your audience (how many engaged followers you have)
So knowing this, we know we need to have hashtags that people are searching for and following. So in the first part of your workbook, I want you to brainstorm everything about your business, product or service that you think people might be searching for.
Now that you all warmed up, let’s talk about finding the best Instagram hashtags for your brand. You are going to want to find hashtags that increase engagement and gain quality followers (so try to stay away from any of those large Instagram hashtags that you might see like #followforfollow – although these have a large search volume they will most likely not attract the right customer to your profile.
So how do you find hashtags that your audience would be searching for or following?
Look to your competitors & other influencers in your niche
What are they using? Take note of the ones that have good search volume.
Use Instagram’s search function
Type a keyword that’s relevant to your brand into the search bar, then select the “Tags” tab. Instagram will give you a list of all the hashtags with that keyword. This is a bit of an experiment. Remember that a large number means that your content might get lost in the masses. Go back to that brainstorming list you made at the beginning and start searching them here to see if they would be good options for you.
Consider related hashtags.
On any hashtag page, right above the “Top” and “Recent” tabs, you’ll find a list of related hashtags that you can scroll through. This is a great way to find ones that might be a bit more narrowed down.
Look through your own Content
Go back to the posts that you have used hashtags on. Check the analytics. There may be some that you have used that have worked well and you should make note of.
Use local or branded hashtags
Does your city have certain hashtags that are relevant to your brand? Ex. #yeglocal. Make sure to add those to your workbook. What about branded hashtags? #wandermintwarrior
You can also look to an online hashtag generating tool like:
Now that you have all these different lists in your workbook you are going to want to come up with groupings of hashtags that you can keep saved on your phone or content calendar to reference when creating posts.
Create the groups based on your different services or avenues of your business. For example, I have one for social media, one for my podcast and another for inspirational content.
The biggest thing you want to remember is that your hashtags need to be relevant to each piece of content you post. You cant use the same group of hashtags on each post. That’s why it is important to have a big list created that you can pick and choose from. By having this list created and grouped you will quickly be able to pick which hashtags you need. Keeping you organized and saving you tons of time!