A kinda crunchy boy mom that loves her coffee and red wine, while maintaining the chaos!
I mentor service providers in the online space to build connected communities that they feel aligned with.
There are so many rumours about hashtags lately it will make your head spin. They are anything from they don’t matter anymore, don’t use all 30 hashtags, density doesn’t matter anymore. Of course the question of do I put them in the comments or in the caption?
The thing is, I can tell you one thing and you do it, then it doesn’t work for your account. So, I am going to tell you, that like many other things on social media you need to find what works specifically for you!
Hashtags
So you can gain clarity around hashtags here is the first thing you should do before researching hashtags!
Choose your Content Pillars: Content pillars are 3-5 topics that you base your content around. These are usually very broad as then you are going to break each topic down into subcategories. In each subcategory you will list about 25 keywords. These keywords then will become your hashtags.
When you have these keywords listed, head over to Instagram to search each one. As you search them individually you are going to look for density. Density is the number beside the hashtags. The lower the density the higher niched it is, which can lead to higher engagement. Ideally you want to have a variety of densities. This means some low=under 10,000, Medium= 500,000 and less and high density is anything over this. High density hashtags should not be used as your post can get lost in the sea of posts. I recommend filling your hashtags with low and medium density.
So the biggest question of all is how many to use on your post? You are allowed up to 30 hashtags on each post, either in your caption or in comments, or split up. That choice is up to you, however for reels or IGTVs I recommend putting them in the caption. Myself and my clients have been trying different hashtag strategies and from personal experience every account is going to react differently, every post may react differently so do not give up. Depending on your account numbers this is where the number of hashtags could differ. I would strongly recommend 8-15 hashtags on every post with accounts over 1000 followers and 20-30 hashtags on accounts with less than 1000. I suggest this because when you are still building a following you want as many opportunities as you can of your account being found.
We need to remember that hashtags are like our search engine optimization for Instagram. When your post is optimized with hashtags, a piece of the puzzle, you can have greater engagement.
The other piece of hashtags is refreshing and researching new hashtags every month. This is done because we do not want to be using the same ones over and over again. This is also beneficial for reviewing your hashtags for their effectiveness, and availability. Things move very quickly in this space so it’s always good to review your analytics and check that everything is working the way you want it to.
Hashtags, like I’ve said, are only a small piece of your strategy. They should still be included in your monthly strategy of review. Instagram has not done away with hashtags. If hashtags are still not making sense, or you are not seeing the benefit of them on your account, let’s set up a time to chat about your account because your hashtags could need a refresh or there may be another piece of the puzzle that isn’t working for you. If you are looking for a quick how to refresher for hashtags check out my ebook How to Find your Hashtags.
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