How To Use Instagram Hashtags To Grow Your Following

Skye Khilji:

Okay, follow up question two from my sister. Let's get into it.

Jade Varley:

Hi, Skye. The second question that I had also regarding Instagram was hashtags. I think I'm just about starting to get my head around them a bit. But I don't think I really have a full understanding of how they work and the best way to use them for your digital marketing for your business. So if you could give any insights on hashtags, that would be great. Thank you.

Skye Khilji:

Hashtags, hashtags, hashtags, okay. There's a lot to talk about in this one, but we'll make it quick.

So the first thing is the hashtags. Where do you put them? Well, it doesn't make a difference if you put them in your actual post description, or as the first comment that comes down to preference. What I will tell you is if you do put them in your post description, use a tool like Insta space to create space in your caption. Nobody wants to read a big book. block of text there's bunched up and then you know, a ton of hashtags.

In terms of the hashtags you use, the game has kind of changed quite recently on this. So here's what you need to know. Instagram is able to know what the content of a picture is. And if your hashtags are not relevant to that picture, it will reduce the number of people who see your post, if you post a picture of avocado toast, and your hashtag is something like you know, digital nomad travel, there's a disconnect is not congruent.

So Instagram wants you to be a good community member. So use hashtags that actually represent what is in the picture that makes a big big difference. Now you can still have branded hashtag so in your case, Jade #suitedtobusiness in my case, #freethewageslave.

That's totally fine. But the priority here is really make sure your hashtags represent the picture. Do not use the same 30 hashtags are 10 hashtags on every post. Figure out which ones you want in all of your posts and I recommend that's just Two to three, and then use individual hashtags for each post. Now in terms of the hashtags, why do we use hashtags?

The reason is on Instagram, not only can we follow accounts, we can also follow hashtags. So for example, for me, I want to follow hashtag quit nine to five, so I can see all the content being created, you know, for that specific topic. And when you go to the Explore page on Instagram, it's the one with the little magnifying glass, you can type in a hashtag.

And if you looked at, for example, digital nomad, you're going to see that that explore page is going to show you the top nine posts, and then the most recent nine posts. The goal is to get into the top nine posts for their hashtag. That is like Google, when you want to get into position one for when somebody searches for digital nomad on Google. You want to show up on page one as close to the top.

It works like that. You want to show up for that hashtag as close to the top. People go and search For that hashtag and they look at those top posts a lot. So if you show up there a lot more people are going to discover your account. So the question then becomes, how do I show up there?

Well, I recommend we do it in two ways. One, I always want to be showing up in the most recent. So for #quit9to5, nearly all of my posts include the hashtag. So I show up in the most recent, nearly all of the time, if somebody goes in there and checks me out. The top posts, how you appear there really comes down to the competition, when you search for that hashtag and Instagram is going to tell you how many people follow that hashtag.

If it's 2 million people, the chance of your post out of 2 million, you know, people following the hashtag and all of those posts created for it, the chances of your post showing up at the top is really, really low. So we want to have a blend of hashtags that we use that have a lot of people following them and not too many.

If your account has under 10,000 followers, you want to be using hashtags that have less than 100,000 people following them, okay, you can throw in some high value or high volume hashtags, you know, in the millions and stuff, but I wouldn't really be posting any hashtags that have more than a million people following them. Listen, I don't care how good your picture is, you are not showing up in the top 10 for hashtag travel, it just ain't happening. I'm sorry.

So, you know, when you're under 10,000, keep that low to mid range of under 100,000. And I would probably go from about 30,000 to 100,000 followers per hashtag when my account is under 10,000. Okay, if you need help with that, there's a really cool tool you can use is called flick. It is a premium tool, but you can get a trial for free. You go there and you put in your hashtag, let's just say it's, you know, barley, and it's going to show you his the hashtags with a good amount of followers and low competition. And that's the key thing.

When there's low competition and a good amount of followers. You're going to get seen by a lot of people and you're probably going to appear in those top posts. So that is the goal of hashtags on Instagram.