Hashtag The Day Away
If Instagram has you in a tailspin, wondering what the hell hashtags are and why you need them anyway, I’m here to break it down for you. I know that hashtags can be overwhelming and I can honestly say that I’ve slacked in posting on Instagram solely because of hashtags. Seriously, what’s the point anyway? Amiright??
To put it simply, think of your hashtags of additional free marketing tools within Instagram that allow you to be found more easily. Hashtags are kind of like categories on your blog, or tags that narrow down your searches.
With 500+ million active users per day, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of posts. Accoding to data analytics platform, SproutSocial, using hashtags in your posts can increase your search visibility by 12.6%. Here are some tips to get the most of Instagrams hashtagging feature and a few little tricks I’ve learned along the way. source
Sometimes Less Is More
Let me clarify… I say sometimes because the amount of hashtags you may need varies widely based on your product, brand, and demographic. Instagram gives you 30 hashtag spaces in one post before you they start looking at you like spam, but you don’t need to use all of them. The ideal number is around 11 hashtags for visibility.
That being said, the amount of hashtags you need on each post varies. Don’t be afraid to test out varying numbers on different types of posts and monitor your analytics to see which performs better!
Relevance Takes Priority
There are many reasons why people use hashtags… Most of them are because they play favorites or find something funny that’s compeltely unrelated to what they’re posting about. When picking your hashtags, keep in mind that the relevance of the tag should take priority. Think of a time when you saw a post and you sat there wondering why that particular hashtag was on a post. If it doesn’t make sense to you and it’s not a branded keyword, steer clear from it.
Keeping Track Of Hashtags
Now that we’ve gotten the how, somewhat down, we need to make sure we’re keeping track of all of our hashtags. There are many different ways of keeping track of them but the easiest way, in my opinion, is a simple excel spreadsheet. Here are some things you should be tracking:
- Active Users
- Likes
- Time/Day of Post
- How Much It Showed Up (impressions)
- Reach (how many people actually saw it)
There are tons of things you can track when it comes to your hashtags, especially when you breakdown what platform you’re using; but the key to starting out, is keep it simple. When it comes to hashtags it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and leave yourself stuck in the dreaded state of decision paralysis.
#inclosing
So my biggest takeaway for you when you’re just starting out is simple, have FUN! Use the silly ones if you want to, put random quotes in them, or use whole sayings in them. Basically, get yourself in the habit of hashtags, embrace the weirdness, and eventually you’ll be like me where you’re naturally using hashtags in your conversations and coming up with new ones.
If this post helped you in some sort of way, I want to know!
Please comment with questions or suggestions on what else you’d like to see. It’s a new blog and while I’m just throwing stuff out there to see what you might like, when you comment, message me on Facebook or Instagram, or email I’ll be able to tailor my content to things that you’re actually looking for!
