Hashtags rose to fame in the early days of Twitter as a form of categorising content. It was quickly picked up by other social media platforms and is now a vital part of the way we communicate with the world online.

Here's our guide to helping you use hashtags correctly so you can carve out your social media real estate and get the engagement your content deserves.

Studies show that posts with 11+ hashtags have 3X more engagement than posts without them. This means triple likes and comments overall!

Where you put your hashtags boils down to aesthetics. Scenario - you've planned and created a beautiful post with a witty caption and then you add 30 clickable hashtags underneath which at best look a little clunky and at worst drive the viewers away from your post and into the other content on one of the hashtags. So although the result is the same in terms of exposure, you may want to draft up your hashtags in advance in a note then as soon as you have posted, copy that into your first comment and let them do their magic.

However, If you have a niche hashtag for your brand that you want people to see, use and share a good way to do that is to place it at the bottom of your caption and use the rest in a comment. Just make sure you use no more than 30 in total.

The best strategy for using hashtags is to start small and go big. The reason for this is if you use hashtags with millions of reach your content will instantly get lost. No matter how perfect your image is, you would have to outrank thousands of new posts every second

For example; you have a picture of a beautiful sunrise. Using the hashtag #sky you would be competing with 222m photos which would swallow up the image whereas something like #sunrisers 139k or the larger #morningsky 736k would give you less competition and a more effective reach! It goes without saying the better your content the better it will start out, so make sure to check the hashtags first and make sure your content rocks and will stand out.

Even if you include some high turnover hashtags using the lower-tiered hashtags will help your content get better momentum.

The best way to keep your profile relevant is to gather 8 or so hashtags that really describe your feed or brand's aesthetic and rotate the remainder based on the content and trending hashtags. Keep an eye on what works and maybe change up your standard group to incorporate what works best!

Since Instagram's algorithm update they have been cracking down on spammer and bot accounts, so even super active accounts are receiving unwanted attention and sometimes even losing access to their account, using a regular rotation of hashtags will protect you from this.

So to sum up no matter where you are in your Instagram journey create a strategy that works by doing the following:

• Use between 11 and 30 hashtags

• Don't use the most popular hashtags

• Find your niche and rotate your hashtags

If you have any questions. Feel free to reach out to me or the rest of the team on LiveChat. We have 24/7 Support and are always happy to chat 🙂

Thanks!

Natalie Roberts

Instagram Growth Expert