Reach more of your target audience with quality hashtags. But, how do we find these quality hashtags? This smart guide will help give you a great understanding of everything that goes into finding the best hashtags for your content. By the end of this smart guide, you'll have gained a knowledge of hashtags, metrics and how to utilise Flick's powerful search features.
What are hashtags?
Think of an Instagram hashtag as a folder on your computer. Whether it’s your holiday pictures or your work files, each folder contains a type of content or group of information related to the same topic. Folders allow you to find exactly what you need, quickly and efficiently. At their most basic level, hashtags are simply Instagram’s version of folders.
The hashtags you use will have an impact on what type of account and content you post, Instagram will use this to categorize your account to show your content to the correct people.
When to use hashtags
You can use hashtags on feed posts, story posts and within your Instagram bio.
Feed posts:
when using feed posts, every post you create can be accompanied by up to 30 hashtags to help your content get discovered.
In your bio:
Putting hashtags in your bio is a great way of ensuring you're account is suggested to the right people. We'd suggest using up to 2 hashtags in your bio.
Story posts:
Much like feed posts, using hashtags in your stories means that anyone who searches for that hashtag in Instagram will be able to see your story!
Ranking on hashtags
Reach up to 40% more people by ranking on hashtags. To rank in the ‘top posts’ section of a hashtag, the engagements received on your post should be similar to the engagements received by content currently ranking in the top posts feed.
So, if your posts get 50 likes and the average engagements on posts on a hashtag you want to use gets 2,000, you are unlikely to rank highly on that hashtag.
There are two sections to a hashtag, ‘recent’ & ‘top posts’. To get results, you need to rank in the ‘top posts’ section of a hashtag.
Choosing Hashtags
Boost your chances of reaching your target audience by using relevant hashtags. The hashtags you use must be as relevant to your post and niche as possible. You’re more likely to receive engagements and follows if the people you reach (through hashtags) are going to love what you’re posting.
The best hashtags for you, are not the best hashtags for everyone else. There isn’t a set group of hashtags that help people perform well – it’s completely dependant on your account.
Not all hashtags are made equal, there are many different metrics to think about when choosing your hashtags. The next chapter will highlight what types of metrics hashtags have, and how you can read them.