Hashtags are so ingrained in our everyday vernacular, that we generally don’t even think twice when we hear someone say “hashtag summer” or “hashtag vacation.” However, hashtags can play an important role in successful social media posts, and it is for this reason that you should pay attention to what hashtags you use. This is because hashtags are used across many different social media channels and are added to posts in order to show that they relate to some specific topic. They are also used by people to search for topics that interest them.
Even though hashtags are important in social media, many of us have probably used hashtags without putting much thought into whether or not they are truly helping your performance. While you may already think you are an Instagram pro, have you ever asked yourself if you are following best practices with your hashtag use?
If you want to use the right Instagram hashtags, you should follow a specific process for determining which ones may help your post the most. You have probably used an Instagram hashtag generator before, and this is an important step. However, there is much more that you need to do in order to use Instagram hashtags to the fullest. In fact, you should be researching what hashtags are correlated with the best post interaction rates, since you most likely want as many interactions as you can get. Moreover, you need to know how many hashtags you should be using in your posts. Let’s go over what you need to consider for each one of these areas.
Instagram Hashtag Generators
You probably already know that some hashtags are followed by huge amounts of people while others have a very small following. It goes without saying that you want to find the hashtags that have the possibility to reach the most people. But how can you avoid doing all the tedious research? And how can you ensure that your research is uncovering relevant hashtags?
An advanced, AI-powered Instagram hashtag generator (which is ideally free to use) is the solution. These tools can generate a list of hashtags that show the corresponding reach of each hashtag. Keep in mind that it is important that the tool doesn’t just show you the reach of a hashtag, but is also filtered to display only relevant hashtags.
However, don’t simply rely on the hashtags generated by a tool if you truly want to make a data-based decision about what hashtags to use. Simply having a generator is not the end of the process, since there are other optimizing steps you should take.
Using a Hashtag Research Tool
Finding the hashtags with the highest reach potential is a great start when you are trying to find the Instagram hashtags that you should use. However, you shouldn’t solely look at the reach of a hashtag that is generated by a tool. In fact, there are other things to take into account, namely the average post interaction rates of the hashtags being used.
Like so many of the other social media networks, Instagram’s algorithm favors posts that have high post interaction and engagement. Therefore, you generally want to find hashtags that, on average, have higher post interaction rates. This is where an Instagram hashtag research tool can help.
With an Instagram hashtag research tool, you can pull in data from other profiles in your industry and the average post interaction rates of those hashtags. Once you discover the best performing hashtags in your industry in terms of post interaction rate, you can cross-reference these hashtags with the list you have from using the Instagram hashtag generator. You would then be able to identify hashtags that are relevant, have the most reach, and the highest post interaction rates.
The Number of Instagram Hashtags to Include on Your Post
So you have a list of Instagram hashtags that have the highest reach and those that correlate with high post interaction rates. But what about using them in an Instagram post? Even if you know how to find the right Instagram hashtags, many may ask themselves: “How many Hashtags should I use on Instagram?”
Luckily, a study by Fanpage Karma analyzed millions of profiles and the results plainly show that 30 hashtags per post, which is the maximum allowed on an Instagram post, is the number you should be using. This is because using 30 hashtags is correlated with the highest number of likes and reach for posts. This means that you should make sure you are identifying 30 hashtags using the approaches described above to use.
Finding and Using the Right Instagram Hashtags
Let’s be clear, hashtag generators are a great help when trying to improve the performance of your Instagram posts. However, this is only the first thing to consider when creating your list of hashtags to use. You should also be looking for the best hashtags in terms of post interaction rate and, of course, also use the optimal number of hashtags in your posts.
Even when considering the best practices as described above, you need to make engaging, high-quality posts and hashtags can’t cover up poor content. With that being said, one area that you most likely can optimize on Instagram is the hashtags you use.
