What are the hashtags?
Do you think there is only one kind of hashtag? Wrong, there are very many. According to what kind of profile you have (influencer, niche, business profile, etc.) a certain kind of hashtags can provide a higher reach than otherwise. If you want to see the most growth possible for your account, it would be beneficial to know which hashtags work best for you. It’s important to note that each “hashtag strategy” needs to be customized to your profile. Once you find hashtags that provide great reach, you can tweak the strategy and get even greater reach.
Remember, the goal is to get your audience to follow you. So you need to publish posts that your target audience is interested in.
The different types of hashtags
Trending Hashtags
These are the hashtags that can bring you the most reach within a short period of time. Most of the time, they have a short-term reach because they are related to certain events. These events are often related to media coverage. Example: If CNN reports on a UFO video, a lot of people will search for UFO videos. But it can also be about protests or other political movements like #BLM or #Metoo. Most of the time, these are short-term trends. It would be beneficial for you to join these trends to reach even more people.
Viral hashtags
Viral hashtags are the ones with the most reach. For example, they can be #motivation, #travel or #cars. Most of the time, they have a post count of 10 to 500 million. For smaller accounts, it is virtually impossible for these hashtags to get on the Explore page. However, once you get to the top of the Explore page, you will have an extremely high reach.
Niche and sub-niche hashtags
Such hashtags are effective for small/medium accounts with 10-100,000 followers. With sub-niche hashtags, you have the advantage of targeting a specific audience. Instagram’s algorithm will recognize this and ensure that your posts are directed to a specific audience more often. Example: If you are a fan of the Japanese car “Nissan Skyline”, you can either use as hashtags “#cars” to reach a broad mass of people who are probably not particularly interested in this car, or you could use “#nissanskyline” and target exactly the audience that has been actively searching for this car. The more targeted your posts and hashtags are, the more the audience will be interested in your posts and thus follow your account.
Location Hashtags
These are hashtags that represent a specific location. This can be, for example, a district, a popular street or a building. These hashtags are especially useful for local businesses that are located in a specific city, neighborhood, street or building. Above all, they are good for creating a relationship between the posts and the location. Instagram’s new algorithm recognizes this and there is a possibility that posts of yours will be displayed if people are in the place or nearby or have searched for the location.
Blacklisted hashtags
There are, of course, some hashtags which you should not use under any circumstances. These hashtags are often against the community guidelines and if your profile uses these hashtags, you may become a victim of the famous “Shadowban”. This means that your account will have virtually no reach and your posts will no longer be displayed. Often, these hashtags are insults, names of drugs, sexist, violent or perverted terms and some more. You should avoid using these words as hashtags at all costs. In the worst case, your account can be suspended.
What is the best hashtag strategy?
I recommend you use about 15-25 hashtags. Try to split it 50-50. Big and viral hashtags and niche hashtags. But the results also depend on the quality of your posts, how many followers you already have and how high the engagement is. It’s best to experiment a bit and then look at the stats from your posts.
