My Instagram Hashtag Story
This magical hashtag journey starts with a nine-year-old. My youngest son, when he’s not Fortnite dancing, dapping, and playing clash of clans, he loves to use hashtags. He doesn’t understand what they mean, really, but always seems to use them in a way that makes me laugh, #kidproblems. What are hashtags all about and how are marketers using the right number in the right place to find new audiences to build their communities organically. Each social media platform has a different strategy when it comes to hashtags. Some platforms use them as a referencing tool, like Facebook, where if you search for a specific hashtag, you will find posts with the referenced hashtag in them. The hashtag itself won’t drive new traffic to you, but has the opportunity to improve post engagement if used right. On Instagram, which this article is about, there is a magical number of hashtags, a strategy to make them most efficient to use, and a specific place to use them, because Hashtags do bring in new traffic on Instagram and help to boost organic reach.
The Magical Hashtag Wand
Pretty much like Harry Potter’s wand made of holly and crafted with a phoenix feather, there is magic to the right number of hashtags. In an experiment conducted by Agorapulse, they found the magic number was thirty hashtags. The 2nd best number was eight. I have seen the best traction personally with 30. Thirty hashtags probably sound daunting and gets even more daunting when you start to search for the right ones when you put together your post. The secret to wielding this magical hashtag wand is coming up with core hashtags.
The Secret of the Core Hashtags
What words or hashtags exemplify your business’ brand? For a fitness business a Core Hashtag could be #holistichealth, #fitness, or #wellness. Those words become core hashtags and should make up around 50% of the total post hashtags. The other 50% of your hashtags should come from the creative itself. If I am a Food Service Business and posting about our scone of the day, I may use hashtags that represent the specific type of special scone #orangespicescone or #seasonalscone. Next step? The best hashtag recipe is made up of both popular and niche hashtags.
The Battle with the Balrog (Warning: We are about to get really nerdy)
When Gandolf the Grey takes on Durin’s Bane, the Balrog in Lord of the Rings, it wasn’t a battle Gandolf won over night, it was long sustained effort that helped Gandolf evolved into Gandolf the White. Highly popular hashtags will produce instant traction in the newsfeed, but also come along with a high chance of spam, like when you get invited to rep a brand of clothing that your business has nothing to do with. This means that your final hashtag recipe shouldn’t consist of all popular hashtags, (#fitness, #nutrition, #food, #drinks) because it will create an initial drive to your post, but will fizzle out quickly and be riddled with spam. When niche hashtags are used, it will create sustained drive as the niche will reach people over time who specifically follow or like posts with the niche hashtag in it. What about hashtags that are in between? Ones that aren’t in the millions and ones that aren’t in the lower thousands fall into this category. The recipe needs to consist of a balanced mix of 1,000,000+, in the 10,000 to 999,999 range, and anywhere from 1-19,999. When you mix the three popularity zones with hashtags, they ones you have chosen are intentional and connect people to your brand, your posts will get the most reach and engagement.
In the hands of the White Wizard
There are three places that you can place hashtags. The first place is in the post right after the creative like this #attheendwiththecreative. The second place in your post is after and away from the creative. This is when you have finished your creative, you hit the enter key, place a period, and do it again anywhere three or more times. The third is in the comments section. In an effort to make the creative not seem cluttered people have chosen to put hashtags in the comments section. What is the best strategy and why? We start off with the worst. In a place where one story is replaced by another in seconds, even a millisecond makes a difference. Placing hashtags in the comments section delays the hashtag association with your creative enough that it will lose most of the hashtag benefit. What does that mean? It means that people who follow those hashtags may not get your content prioritized in their newsfeed and thus will never see it. It limits new people from seeing your content and makes your content seem less engaging, which then deprioritizes your content further. Don’t use this method. When it comes to both the use of hashtags directly after content or separated by spaces, I have not seen enough information to tell which method provides better results, however, when I have asked people, they tend to click on posts that have the read more available, because there is a sense of mystery to what isn’t being shown. This read more option becomes available after two lines of content, so if you have a perfect one liner, you can add spaces to create the read more option.
The Puzzle Palace
One of my old bosses, this was back when I was a manager in the restaurant world, who ended up firing me, but that’s another story, talked about the puzzle palace, which represents the mysterious world we live in. The puzzle palace is different for each and every business. That means that just because 30 hashtags work best for me, doesn’t mean it is going to work best for you. In essence the only way to know is to test it for yourself and always be authentic. Use meaningful hashtags through the three popularity levels, separate them from your content, so the “more” option appears, and save your core hashtags in the notes section of your phone or create a keyboard shortcut so that you can easily copy and paste your core hashtags to your post and save yourself time. Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing how this article has helped improve your social media performance.
