Users of Instagram are familiar with the phenomenon of hashtags. Many people successfully use them to promote their profile, go to the TOP in views, likes and comments, and earn new subscribers.
Instagram hashtags can be compared to the SEO of sites, since the mechanism of their work is approximately the same. What are hashtags and how can they bring a profile to the top?
What is it and why are hashtags so important?
In short, hashtags can be described as special tags on a variety of topics. These tags collect specific content into groups and present them to users. Roughly speaking, these are the keywords by which you can find other people’s posts, and by which other people find your posts. A feature of hashtags is the # signs in front of words, as well as the spelling of phrases together, or through an underline.
With hashtags right, getting the audience you need is easy enough. Specialized hashtags will attract users interested in a specific topic to your account. That is, in fact, you will get a target audience, and all that remains is to sell them your product or service. In addition, hashtags allow you to independently search for customers by looking at other people’s posts. Moreover, it is not necessary to do this manually, because there are many services that can automate this process.
What kinds and types of hashtags are there?
As stated above, hashtags are keywords. They are also divided into several types according to their frequency. Unfortunately, Instagram does not have the ability to view statistics on the frequency of individual hashtags. But instead, you can see how many posts the feed gives by the hashtag.
Thus, hashtags are divided into four types:
- High-frequency (more than one hundred thousand posts)
- Medium (from ten to one hundred thousand posts)
- Low-frequency (from five hundred to ten thousand posts)
- Rare (less than five hundred posts)
- In addition to the division by frequency, hashtags are distinguished by the types of use:
- Branded – the own hashtags of a particular brand. They are used to increase awareness;
- Content – match the content of the post. These hashtags must be present in every publication, they work to find and attract the target audience;
- Trending – helps to increase the activity of the business profile;
- Categories – used to simplify navigation in your account. They can be used for various categories, for example, contests, chats and others;
- Geo – hashtags indicating a specific area. Their use is justified if you are looking for a target audience in a certain location;
- Spam is the most controversial category. These hashtags may bring some likes and followers, but are not particularly loved by Instagram.
How to maximize the potential of hashtags and avoid annoying mistakes?
It would seem, what could be easier than choosing and listing keywords on the desired topic? Yes, this does not require an investment of effort and time, but in order for hashtags to begin to bring results, you will have to delve into the theory a little. First of all, you need to remember that Instagram will not allow you to insert more than 30 hashtags into a post, it will cut off everything unnecessary on its own, or even completely delete all hashtags at once.
Many instructions advise using only the most popular hashtags, and they are partly right – a large audience coverage could theoretically attract more subscribers. But you need to remember that such hashtags are usually followed by the same entrepreneurs like you. Therefore, it makes sense to dilute popular hashtags with mid-frequency, low-frequency and rare, while continuing to ensure that they all correspond to the desired topic. Ideally, you need to compile a personal selection of words for your own business account, and select hashtags for it.
