Hashtags are an important marketing strategy for Instagram. It helps your posts reach a target audience, attract followers in your niche, increase engagement, and develop a more positive and recognizable brand image.
To effectively optimize your posts you need to put some deep thought into a strategy so that you’re in the right space to get the relevant audience.
Hashtags For Instagram
An Instagram hashtag is a combination of letters, numbers, and/or emoji preceded by the # symbol (e.g., #NoFilter). They are used to categorize content and make it more discoverable.
Anyone who conducts an Instagram hashtag search will see a page showing all the posts tagged with that hashtag. There are a lot of people who based on their interest follow hashtags also. Using the right hashtag strategy makes you visible to the right audience for your brand/product/content.
Social Media Marketing Strategy to Promote your Business
Hashtags are used in social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to categorize posts by topic.
While it can be hard to choose the right hashtags for your marketing strategy, don’t have to guess. Before choosing a group of hashtags for your posts, take a look at the most common ones you can use and their categorizations.
As of July 19, 2021, these are the top 50 hashtags on Instagram:
- #love (1.835B)
- #instagood (1.150B)
- #fashion (812.7M)
- #photooftheday (797.3M)
- #beautiful (661.0M)
- #art (649.9M)
- #photography (583.1M)
- #happy (578.8M)
- #picoftheday (570.8M)
- #cute (569.1M)
- #follow (560.9M)
- #tbt (536.4M)
- #followme (528.5M)
- #nature525.7M
- #like4like515.6M
- #travel497.3M
- #instagram482.6M
- #style472.3M
- #repost471.4M
- #summer454.2M
- #instadaily444.0M
- #selfie422.6M
- #me420.3M
- #friends396.7M
- #fitness395.8M
- #girl393.8M
- #food391.9M
- #fun385.6M
- #beauty382.8M
- #instalike374.6M
- #smile364.5M
- #family357.7M
- #photo334.6M
- #life334.5M
- #likeforlike328.2M
- #music316.1M
- #ootd308.2M
- #follow4follow290.6M
- #makeup285.3M
- #amazing277.5M
- #igers276.5M
- #nofilter268.9M
- #dog264.0M
- #model254.7M
- #sunset249.8M
- #beach246.8M
- #instamood238.1M
- #foodporn229.4M
- #motivation229.1M
- #followforfollow227.9M
Always remember that the most popular hashtags are not necessarily the most effective. If you are targeting generic traffic then it’s ok to go for these broad search hashtags.
But if you are a company, small business, product, brand then specific niche hashtags would be relevant for you to get the right audience.
Niche Hashtags for Instagram
Hashtags can be categorized into 13 distinct types:
- Product or service hashtags
- Industry / Product Niche hashtags
- Branded Hashtags
- Campaign hashtags
- User-generated content hashtags
- Industry Instagram community hashtags
- Special event or seasonal hashtags
- Cultural movement hashtags
- Location hashtags
- Daily hashtags
- Relevant phrase hashtags
- Acronym hashtags
- Emoji hashtags
To create more relevance you can combine niche and broad to reach out broader audience with more significance and outreach.
As individuals, you can use daily, acronyms, and holiday hashtags to engage in trending conversations.
Top Hashtag Mistakes to Avoid
- Avoid hashtag overload.
- Don’t Use Only “Popular” or Generic Hashtags.
- Don’t Ignore Local Hashtags.
- Not doing research at all
- Not Using Hashtags at All.
- Not using relevant hashtags that make sense.
- Not having a strong content strategy.
Everything takes time, so be relevant and consistent. Don’t over-optimize with spamming hashtags. You can utilize hashtags strategy to your advantage through comprehensive research and a strong content marketing campaign.
Note: Instagram’s community guidelines clearly state that “posting repetitive comments or content” is not okay. If you use the same hashtags for every post, your content will be penalized by the algorithm.