Are you looking to improve your business’s presence on Instagram? If so, you might be wondering how to effectively use Instagram hashtags to drive engagement and discoverability. In this second part, we’ll continue to explore the latest strategies and best practices for Instagram hashtags for business in 2023.
#2: What Types of Instagram Hashtags Should You Use for Business?
Depending on your company, sector, and content, the ideal Instagram hashtags will differ for each account. Let’s examine the hashtag categories to use and avoid.
The Best Hashtags for Instagram
It’s natural to believe that the most well-liked or trending Instagram hashtags would facilitate discovery the best. Viral hashtags don’t actually help as much as you might think because they are frequently filled with low-quality content.
Rather than relying on viral or trending hashtags, it can be beneficial to discover relevant but less common hashtags. One way to start is by searching for popular Instagram hashtags that have no more than 1 million related posts. By searching for hashtags that describe your business, products, customers, or industry, you can narrow down your search and find more niche but effective options. To see the number of related posts for any hashtag on Instagram, simply perform a quick search.
To continue, once you’ve found popular hashtags with under 1 million related posts, it’s important to narrow your focus. Try adding at least one relevant hashtag with fewer than 100,000 posts, and another niche hashtag that’s specific to your content or audience. You can easily find Instagram hashtags at these levels by entering keywords and exploring suggestions.
Although niche hashtags may have fewer than 10,000 posts, they can still be beneficial for boosting discovery. That’s because less-popular hashtags increase your chances of ranking high on the Instagram hashtag search page or staying in the Recent section longer.
Lastly, don’t forget to include your company’s branded Instagram hashtag and any relevant campaign hashtags. While these hashtags may not provide as much context to Instagram, they make it easier for others to search for your content.
Adding a branded hashtag to your Instagram bio is a great way to allow customers to easily view your organization’s content that has been hashtagged. You can also encourage customers to use campaign hashtags in any content they create that features your brand, making it easier for you and potential customers to discover their user-generated content.
While it’s okay to reuse Instagram hashtags in different posts, it’s important to avoid blindly copying and pasting the same groups of hashtags without reviewing their relevance and usefulness to your content. Doing so will ensure that you extract maximum value from the hashtags you use.
Avoid These Instagram Hashtags
While they may appear relevant to your content, viral and generic hashtags won’t help you drive discovery. These hashtags are immensely popular, which makes it difficult to land one of the top spots on their Instagram hashtag pages due to the fierce competition.
Furthermore, since your content will only appear in the Recent section of the hashtag pages for a short while, these hashtags won’t provide you with much value. It’s best to use the Instagram hashtag slot for one of the options mentioned earlier instead.
It’s also essential to steer clear of banned hashtags, which Instagram downgrades because of their spammy or harmful attributes. Using a single banned hashtag a couple of times won’t likely have any impact on your content or account. However, using them frequently could reduce your reach and engagement.
Remember that Instagram will not stop you from adding prohibited hashtags to your account. Instead, you must manually check their status. If you see an alert stating that recent posts are hidden due to Community Guidelines issues, as in the example below, you’ll know that you’ve found a banned hashtag.
When you search for a hashtag, you might occasionally also see a “Can We Help?” warning, as in the illustration below. Despite the fact that these hashtags aren’t technically forbidden, Instagram has connected them to sensitive material, which may have an impact on your ranking signals. It is best to stay away from these hashtags because they might reduce your reach.
Instagram regularly checks hashtags for quality, so they might prohibit one you previously used. Just before publishing, check your hashtags to make sure you haven’t added any prohibited ones.
#3: Where Should Hashtags Go on Instagram?
When publishing posts or reels on Instagram, you have the option to add hashtags in the caption or comments. However, it is generally recommended to add them directly to the caption by @creators. This increases the likelihood of your content being found in search, resulting in more engagement.
Don’t worry about hashtags making your captions appear cluttered or spammy. Instagram automatically truncates captions after around 80 characters in the feed. If your captions contain at least 80 characters of text, Instagram won’t display the hashtags.
To keep your captions tidy, you can add hashtags at the end of the caption, separating them with line breaks or emojis from the rest of the content. By doing this, you can help your audience focus on what’s most important to them.
#4: Alternative hashtags: Additional Methods of Promoting Discovery
You probably won’t be able to accomplish your Instagram marketing objectives by relying solely on hashtags. What else can you do to increase the exposure of your content to your target audience? Utilize these suggestions as an addition to the Instagram hashtags strategy for your business.
Include pertinent keywords in Instagram captions
When it comes to telling Instagram about your content, hashtags aren’t the only tool available. Adding relevant keywords to your captions is also crucial. Keywords offer context, enabling Instagram to deliver your content to the right audience and show it in relevant searches, increasing visibility.
However, this doesn’t mean that your captions should read like a keyword list. Instead, try incorporating them in a natural way that encourages your audience to engage with your content and take action.
Choose Relevant Topics for Instagram Reels
Instagram facilitates the process of telling the platform about the content of your reels if you create them within the mobile app. Along with captions and hashtags, you can select up to three topics for your reel.
Follow the publishing workflow and select the Add Topics option on the last screen to add topics. Every time you publish a reel, keep checking back to see if you can find the ideal niche topic. Instagram keeps adding new topics to provide more pertinent context.
Strengthen Text Overlays in Reels with Context
You have an additional choice for defining the context of your content when you create reels. To make sure the Instagram algorithm can understand what you’re talking about, the official @creators account advises making short videos in the app and using in-app captions.
Select the captions sticker from the sticker tray to add captions to a reel. Additionally, you can enable auto-generated reel captions in the Advanced Settings menu found on the publication screen for reels.
Put Alt Text in Your Instagram Posts
Alt text can aid in search engine optimization even though it is primarily a tool for accessibility. Avoid rewriting the caption when writing effective alt text; instead, simply describe the image.
When creating feed content on Instagram, you have the option to add alt text directly in the app. Simply go to the Advanced Settings menu and select Write Alt Text. In case this option is unavailable, such as when using Business Suite, you can still add a brief image description at the end of your caption.
Conclusion
Adding the right Instagram hashtags to your content doesn’t guarantee an instant solution for low reach or engagement in business. However, it can help get your posts, reels, and stories in front of the right audience, creating more opportunities to achieve key marketing goals.