Hashtags can build your brand, help boost a marketing campaign, and help your target audience find you. Using hashtags is great for audiences to discover you when they search a hashtag on the hashtag page. You are able to use hashtags in your Instagram posts, your Instagram stories and in your Instagram bio. 

The goal is to be as high as you can on that hashtag page, so more people can find you. The higher you are, the better chances you have of someone clicking on your post!  So, what determines where you'll be on the page?

 1. How much engagement your post receives. 

The more likes, comments and shares you get on your profile will determine where your post falls. The more engagement a post receives, the likelihood that Instagram wants to keep your post up higher on the page  for more accounts to engage with it. 

2. Outcome of post.

Instagram breaks hashtags down into two categories. ‘Top’  (the posts with the most engagement) and ‘Recent’ (a chronological order of time posted). So with using a hashtag, you may have better results in one category compared to the next one. 

3. The number of profile searches. 

If someone is looking for you, because you aren’t showing up on their feed, Instagram recognizes this and will start bumping up that content, or similar content for you to engage with. 

4. How optimized  your profile is.

Instagram can tell when  you are an authority/trusted source on the subject you are hashtagging. They look at follower count, keywords in your profile, engagement on your entire account, etc.

The 6 Ways to Find The Best Hashtags For Your Instagram Post

Knowing how to use hashtags is critical for an Instagram marketer in 2022. You can use up to  30 hashtags, if you’d like. However, there is a lot of controversy over how many hashtags is enough. I say, go for 30. If you had the opportunity to meet 30 new clients, wouldn't you take it? So use those 30 chances to introduce yourself to new audiences. 

Now let's go over the six methods that I like to use to research which hashtags are best for my content 

1. Check out what the influencers are doing in your space. 

Since I’m from the Miami area, I  like to look at what the other popular Miami micro influencers are hashtagging. It is their job to get discovered on Instagram, so might as well piggyback off the work they've done.

 For you, look at which influencers are popular in your geographical area. You can look at some of your followers, who they're following, and go check out those influencers. 

2. Use trending hashtags. 

Find what’s trending! What’s the latest buzz people are talking about.. Look to individuals within your industry or utilize outside tools. 

 If you are a dentist, go find some dentists with strategies you really like on Instagram. Don’t copy them, but you can at least get some inspiration. When you're following your competition or other people in your industry, check out what tags that they're using. There's also a tool, Riteatg.com, that helps you find trending hashtags. 

3. Be very specific. 

You never know when somebody in your audience is looking for something specific. Look at the photo that you're posting, and look for the objects in it, and specify those objects. If you're a dentist, floss is a great example. The brand of floss that you use may be just what someone else is looking for! The specific items would be a great thing to hashtag in your Instagram post to get more traffic. 

4. Relevant hashtags.

 On the flip side from specific, also be relevant. Go to the search bar on Instagram and type in the specific words that we just used in the last idea. For relevant hashtags, we're going to go to the search bar, put our specific words in, and Instagram is going to suggest tags that are relevant to the other tags we've already used. 

This is a great way to see some hashtags that might be geared for your target audience, and to see how many times that hashtag has been used. Maybe the hashtag has been  used around 10,000 times, that could be good. Because these numbers affect how many people find you. If the hashtag has  been used a million times, it's not going to help you out much because you're going to be amongst a million choices for someone who's looking into a hashtag. But if it's only been used a thousand times, you have a much greater chance of being discovered. Got it? 

5. Create. 

Use your brain and create a branded hashtag. Now, this could be a version of your company name. Go ahead and put it in that search bar on Instagram. You definitely want to check that it's not being used for something that you don't want to be associated with, and you can check that out on the search bar. 

But use a branded hashtag, and if your name's really long, you might want to consider shortening it. Branded hashtags are great to use because if you put them on every single post your followers might start using them. If I'm on Instagram and I'm searching for a dentist in Miami, and I come across his clients using him quite frequently in their posts, then for sure I might be more likely to go to that dentist.

6. Create an unbranded but relevant hashtag. 

What do I mean by this? It's something that relates to your brand, but nowhere in no form uses your name, or your company name. Branded hashtags are great for social media campaigns. It gets there to be buzz around the brand and the campaign all at once. 

Branded hashtags are another way for audiences to recognize a company without even seeing the name. Just like when we see a swoosh check mark symbol, we know it’s Nike without even having words. Very similar, branded hashtags use words, but without the actual company name or logo. It becomes automatically known. For example, Kit Kat’s #haveabreak hashtag, is associated with the Kit Kat brand because we know that Kit Kat’s are known for breaking, but it doesn’t use the company name whatsoever, it’s just relevant to the company’s campaign. 

I suggest a funny, unbranded hashtag, this might even be an easier way to get your clients to start marketing for you. To start using that hashtag on their posts when they're talking about you. In fact if it's funny enough, it might even encourage people to start posting from your office or after they visit you, when they might not have thought to do so, but they really wanted a reason to use that funny unbranded hashtag. 

Using hashtags is a great tool to encourage and build your social media. When you utilize different forms of hashtags, you are becoming more discoverable and other accounts will start engaging with you more!

If you need a content strategy to go along with your new hashtag strategy, check this one out here! 

Happy hashtagging!