It’s 2020. The game has changed a bit. As always, Instagram has changed its algorithm yet again. Instagram does this a lot more often than you’d like. So what does that mean for you?
Well for starters, it means that the strategy that you’re currently following may or may not work for you. Here, however, we do not believe in “might”. We believe in certainty. In order to get the maximum exposure for your content and posts, you must tweak your strategies to make the best use of the Instagram Algorithm in 2020.
If you’re clueless and have no idea what to do, then fret not. Cause we have got you covered. Today, we are going to break down step by step and layout the perfect strategic guidelines so that you know how to use Instagram hashtags effectively for maximum exposure.
Now that you know, without wasting a second, let’s dive into the topic.
How To Use Instagram Hashtags Effectively For Maximum Exposure
Time to address the elephant in the room. Following is a strategy guide on how to effectively use your Instagram hashtags to garner maximum exposure
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Fixing the Purpose
Before anything, you must decide for yourself what exactly you are expecting to get out of this. Well, in layman’s terms what exactly are you planning to achieve through using Instagram hashtags. Is it content promotion? Is it getting more engagement? Is it generating leads and making active conversations to help in sales?
Maybe it is something as simple as increasing your followers. Either way, it’s essential that you decide what you really want to do as the outcome depends on your mentality and approach towards the situation
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Work on a Niche
In order to get the bang for the buck, the most important thing you should do and consider is deciding on a niche you wanna work with. This niche will help differentiate you from the larger market and the competitors. Figure out a niche from the different segments available and build upon that to make your offerings much more unique
Selecting a niche is important as it helps you get the right audience for you and your content. Making scattered posts might get you engagement but they’ll not hook your audience. If you are someone who posts about fashion 3 days, then food for 2 days and randomly posts about your dog the other 2 days, the chances are you’ll not make it much far.
It’s always better to have targeted specialized audience for a specific segment that you can target with your hashtags for ensuring maximum engagement thus leading to more followers and lead generation for your business or organization
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Hashtag Research
Adding a hashtag on your post will help increase the reach and engagement of the post by 12.6% over a post that has no hashtags. Well, this doesn’t license you to slam around as many hashtags as you possibly can. The limit of Instagram hashtags is 30.
However, despite using those 30 hashtags if you find yourself having no organic reach and followers or engagement, then it’s high time you revise your Instagram hashtag strategy cause clearly your current one is not working for you. For this, make sure you do hashtag research and know about which hashtags to post for what kind of posts.
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Create Sub-Categories
You’ve opened your very own official health blog. Here you post about different healthy foods and recipes and promote healthy living. But that doesn’t mean you should stop there. Instead, focus on creating sub-categories under these sections and use hashtags catered towards it for narrowing down your audience.
For example, you can use sub-categories like Keto Diet, Intermittent Fasting, and hashtags like #keto #IF to specifically target those audiences and draw more traction towards your posts. This will help you create different groups of content and hashtags for your account or blog.
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Use Relevant Hashtags
You have done your research and even decided on the things you are gonna post on. Now what? Now begins the most important steps. To start off, make sure the hashtags you use are relevant to what you are posting.
To put it in perspective, you should not use hashtags of cats on an Instagram account of dogs or puppies. Using #pets or #animals is a better option other than the cliched choice of using #puppy or #dogs. #Cats #Birds on this account of puppies is completely irrelevant and you’d only be wasting the space of a good hashtag. So make sure your hashtags are in alignment with your content and niche.
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Don’t Spam the Same Hashtags
This should be a no brainer. Using the same hashtags are not only spammy but also annoying. The Instagram algorithm finds this behavior rather spammy and suspicious and can mistake you for a bot thus limiting your reach or worst case scenario – Banning your account.
Use 4 – 5 distinctive hashtags so you can without much of a stretch switch things up. You can even make various kinds of records for various sorts of posts, so in the event that you post about various subjects, you’ll have a hashtag list all set for every theme.
Tips: Utilize a couple of one of a kind hashtags in each post that are tweaked to the substance of your post. This fills two needs: it targets individuals that are keen on the substance of your present post plus it additionally makes abstain from appearing malicious to the Instagram calculation or algorithm.
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Rank your Hashtags
Just like there are low, middle, and high tiers in everything, there are also low, medium, and high engagement hashtags. Well to help you label it and identify which is which, here’s a guide to help you with it:
Low-Engagement Hashtags: Below 1k Likes or has 50,000 posts or less
Medium-Engagement Hashtags: Range of likes from 1-5K or has 50,000 – 250,000 posts
High-Engagement Hashtags: Over 5K likes or has 250,000 – 1,000,000 posts
It’s essential you rank your hashtags in order to improve your chances of getting more followers. While using the high engagement variant might seem to be the best option given the sheer number of posts it has, but it also means that your posts will get flooded by others who do the same. You can manually try this and you’ll find out that within just a few minutes your post gets lost in the ocean of posts using the similar hashtags. Opt for low and medium engagement hashtags as they give your posts better visibility and keeps your post circulating for a lot longer.
In order to reap the maximum benefits couple up your posts and pair them with a combination of different level hashtags. If you’re using 10 hashtags on your posts, we recommend using 4 Low engagement hashtags, 5 Medium engagement hashtags, and 2 High engagement hashtags to get the maximum benefits out of it. If it’s 30, use about 15 low engagement, 10 medium engagement, and 5 high engagement. Pair them up and see what order works best for you.
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Use Hashtags in Your Stories
This is an amazing method of taking your engagement to the next level. Finding applicable hashtags for your Story will give you increasingly certified commitment, particularly if those hashtags depict your post, your record, your business, and the objective market you’re attempting to reach.
Whether or not how many hashtags you can use per story on Instagram is a matter of debate, albeit somewhere close to five to ten hashtags is by all accounts the best objective zone. Our recommendations are to try out different things with the number and see what performs best for you.
It’s always a good idea to do a bit of research before including any hashtags on your story. You’ll have zero output if you use hashtags of pages that are dead. Checking first before posting. lets you pick hashtag pages that are as of now running as a functioning Instagram Story on that page.
We suggest utilizing the content-based hashtag rather than the well-known hashtag stickers as the content-based variant has proved to deliver a better result.
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Analyze and Track your Results
The Instagram Insights option exists for a reason. Using Instagram Insights, you can track your engagement and reach. It helps you to understand what posts are making it big and what is not working out. This helps you put together a better understanding and perspective of your audience’s behavior and helps you tweak your content and hashtags to fill up the hole.
If despite using all of the strategies above your reach hasn’t yet improved to a noticeable degree, it’s time to consider revising your hashtag strategy and eliminating what is not working for you.
Note: In order to do this, you must have a business account that is public. You’ll not be able to enjoy the features such as Instagram Insights if your account privacy is set to public
Conclusion
The content that you’re posting is much more important than hashtags. So make sure you have a content guideline and strategy. Figure out a niche and categorize your posts into different subsections. Remember to always do your research before posting any hashtags.
Make sure that the ones you post are relevant to your posts and in alignment with your business goals. Rank your hashtags and couple them up and find out what works best for you. Through use on Instagram insights, track your progress, and make adjustments accordingly.
So there you have it. Now you have a better understanding and guidelines of how to effectively strategize your Instagram hashtags for getting the maximum reach and engagement. We believe you’ll be greatly benefited from this article. If you have any questions, feel free to consult us. Don’t forget to share your two cents about this in the comment box down below.
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Frustrated with your Instagram engagement? Tried all the things but got subpar results? Dive in to find out how to use instagram hashtags effectively for maximum exposure