HOW TO USE HASHTAGS ON INSTAGRAM IN 2018 - MY HASHTAG STRATEGY

Welcome back to the Instagram Guru Blog and happy Tuesday.

Today we are going to talk about hashtags! I get so many DMs about how to use hashtags, should I use hashtags, are they actually helpful, etc. I'm going to cover all of that, and I'm going to show you guys my secret Instagram strategy for using the right hashtags, and no, it's not as simple as you guys might think.

All right, let's dive in. Hashtags, you need to be using them. I don't care if people say it makes their feed look spammy or they don't know how to use them. I really want to focus on my hashtag strategy because this has been key for my growth and my success on Instagram. It's getting me a lot of visibility daily and it is what makes ALL of my posts hit the trending hashtag section.

You guys can see exactly how many people find your post through hashtags. If you scroll to the post insight at the very bottom, under impressions, it will give you a breakdown of how many ... of where your impressions came from, and usually for me in my top three is hashtags, so that means I'm getting a lot of visibility just from hashtags.

You don't have to have a big account for this to happen to you. I have clients that started off with a thousand followers, 500 followers, and the majority of their visibility came from hashtags after they've implemented this strategy.

Okay, so how does it work? Most people will generally go to hashtags, look at the top trending ones, or pick the really, really big ones, throw them at the bottom of a caption or something, and call it a day. This is a terrible strategy guys.

Put hashtags in a comment- So first of all, I don't really like including my hashtags in my caption. I think it takes up characters that I could be using towards the caption itself to provide value. Instead, I always put my hashtags in a comment. No, it makes absolutely no difference for the algorithm. It's not going to change your ranking, you're not going to increase your chances of getting trending if you're putting your hashtags in the caption. So I put them in the comment section, and that way in case I need to edit them or delete them, it's much easier to just delete a comment instead of having to go in and edit the whole caption. So that's first.

Hashtag breakdown- how do I break down the hashtags? So essentially what I have is something very, very simple. You're allowed to use 30 hashtags per post, and I recommend using all 30 of them. So first off, we're going to start off with five big hashtags. Now when I say big, I mean between I would say like a mil. Not even a mil, 800,000 to 500,000 posts per hashtag, and you can see the number by the hashtag when you search for it. For example, if you search for #gymsharkwomen, it has I think like 800,000 posts. So #gymsharkwomen would be a big hashtag. You use five of those, and make sure that they're specific to your niche, to your page, or to the specific picture.

So again, let's just assume I am a workout influencer. I posted a picture of me wearing Gym Shark apparel, and I'm against a great, beautiful garden. Okay? So my five big hashtags, I would use #gymsharkwomen and look for other hashtags that have to do with the picture or the niche, fitness, that are between 500 and 800 thousand. So that's five. Then I would go ahead and use 10 medium size hashtags. Medium sized are essentially between 500,000 to 300,000. So I would use about 10 to 11 of those, and that's kind of your sweet spot. So we're already at 15 hashtags. How do I break down the other 15? I look for 10 small hashtags. Small is anything under, I would say like under 100,000 to let's say 20,000. So 20,000 to 100,000, that will be your rage for like small hashtags. And again, make sure all your hashtags are niche specific, and I'll talk about it at the end of why it's important to make sure your hashtags are relevant to your picture.

And lastly, for my last five hashtags, I make them post specific. So like I said, I'm wearing fitness apparel against this beautiful garden. I would use #garden. Again, make sure it's a small hashtag. For these five picture specific hashtags, you don't want them to be too big. You can use medium or small hashtags. And so I would make sure to include like #beautifulgarden, #greentrees, #pinkworkoutapparel. Something like that for those five last ones so that they're specific to your post. Okay? That's how you use all your 30 hashtags, and I'm going to include a quick breakdown right here of kind of how you're supposed to use your hashtags so you guys can screenshot this or just write it down if you want to pause the movie.

Why is it important to use niche specific hashtags and make sure that the hashtags are relevant to your post?

First of all, the Instagram algorithm uses hashtags to categorize you and your niche, so if you're a fitness blogger and you're using fitness hashtags, you're telling the algorithm that this is your niche, this is what you're interested in, and it's going to categorize you in that niche. It's going to show you posts on the Explore feed that are in your niche that you're interested in, and it's also going to show other people in your niche your pictures on their Explore feeds. So it's a great way to ensure that your visibility is coming from the right type of people and the right kind of audience.

Secondly, if you're using hashtags that are not specific to your picture or your post, every time you scroll through a hashtag, at the very top there's these three little buttons and you can say either report spam or don't show me pictures for this hashtag. If you're using hashtags that are not specific to the picture or the niche, a lot of people are going to be clicking and reporting your image. Best case scenario, your image is going to get taken down, but worst case scenario, you could get banned from this hashtag. Your account could get flagged for suspicious activity or spam, and we don't want any of that. So it's always really important to use hashtags that are specific to the picture or specific to the niche to ensure that this doesn't happen.

I hope this helped you guys figure out your hashtag strategy, and I cannot wait to see your results. And as always, if you enjoyed this blog post, make sure to give it a thumbs up and drop a comment below, and of course, tag me on Instagram.

If you guys have anything that you've used from my blogs or any information that I share that you find valuable, mention me in your Instastories, mention me in your post, tag me. I love, love, love hearing from you guys. If you have any questions, make sure to drop them below or shoot me a DM on Instagram at workout_unicorn.

I am more than happy to respond to everything. I will see you guys next week and have an amazing Tuesday.