Last Updated 10 months by Emily Standley-Allard

There’s no doubt you’ve seen hashtags all over the place in recent years. Hashtags such as #selflove, #tbt, and #adayinthelife. They are rife all-over social media; Twitter, TikTok and Instagram and they help users interact with one another. They aren’t just being used for fun. In this post we’ll go over 11 Ways Hashtags Can Increase Your Followers and how to successfully use hashtags to increase your engagement on Instagram and other social media platforms.

Ready to start using hashtags for your small business? Here’s a simple beginners guide to them.

 

Why Use Instagram Hashtags?

You might be wondering what the big deal is about them? After all, simply posting your images to your grid and updating your stories is enough to bring new followers to your profile, right?

Well, that might not actually be the case. Here are a few of the big reasons why small businesses need to start adding hashtags to all of their social media posts.

 

Hashtags Make Your Content More Visible

The biggest advantage that using hashtags will bring you is that they will make your content a whole lot more visible. The more you start using then the more likely Instagram users will be to stumble across all your posts.

For instance, if a user were to search for #corgipuppy, or #pugliaitaly, that you had used, then your post would pop up in their search results.

Without using any it is very unlikely that your posts will appear in any searches.

 

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Hashtags Encourage Your Audience to Interact with You

Lots of statistics show that Instagram posts that have been hashtagged are often engaged with a lot more than those that haven’t.

The data shows that users engage with hashtags and will likely use the same tags on their own posts. It’s essential that you are always trying to push engagement on your images as this will further increase their visibility.

Hashtag generator

Hashtags Let You Can See the Latest Industry Trends

Of course, you shouldn’t just stick to labeling all your own photos with hashtags. You should also take some time to browse certain ones and the kinds of photos that are being tagged with them.

This should give you a great insight into the trends that users of the platform are following.

Not only that, though, but it will also give you an insight into some of the latest trends and developments in your industry as well.

 

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How To Use Instagram Hashtags

So, now you know why you need to use Instagram hashtags, but do you know the best ways to use them? Here are some of the things that we highly recommend to businesses who are looking to improve their use of them.

 

@cybermom24 #creators #contentcreator #digitalcreator #bloggers #blogtips #websitetips #smallbusiness #businessowner #womeninbusiness #onlinebusiness #growyourbusiness #digitaltips #socialmediamarketing #marketingtips #googletips @cybermom24 ♬ Go Down Deh (feat. Shaggy and Sean Paul) – Spice

Industry Specific Hashtags

First of all, you need to find out which popular hashtags are relevant to your specific industry. These are the hashtags that will appeal most to your current customers and prospective clients, so using them will make your company profile more visible to them.

What’s more, though, these are hashtags that will be quite niche so not many people will be searching for them – but the users who are looking them up will be the ones that matter.

So, be sure to use some industry specific hashtags to reach the people who matter most.

 

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Branded Hashtags

Most industry specific hashtags will already be in use, but that doesn’t mean that you always need to stick with them. It is also worth coming up with your own uniquely branded ones that are specifically to advertise certain products or services.

A hashtag of your brand’s name or of your company’s logo count. If you use these, you should find that your followers and customers start to as well, which can really help to boost your social media marketing.

 

hashtag instagram
Images by pixabay.com

 

Hashtgas Get Users to Use Your Posts

You can’t just expect Instagram users to start using your branded hashtags unless you specifically ask them to do so. They need a prompt! If you feature your own hashtags prominently on all of your marketing materials and posts, then users might pick up on them.

One great way to get as many people using them as possible, though, is to run an Instagram competition and get people to enter by posting images with your hashtags.

 

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Consider How Many Hashtags to Use

Sometimes, it’s all about how many you use. Sticking to the same hashtag all the time won’t be very efficient as you will be limiting your brand’s visibility to just one single tag.

It’s worth adding as many relevant hashtags as you can so that your post will be listed in the search results for different ones.

However, you need to remember that there is a limit to 30 hashtags per post.

If you try and add any more, Instagram will simply delete them.

 

via GIPHY

Add Hashtags to Your First Comment

You will see that some people add their hashtags into their image description. Others might add a separate comment that is full of them.

We highly recommend this second option. That’s because you won’t then be overloading your image descriptions.

Not only that, though, but adding that extra comment will help give the post’s engagement a little boost, which the algorithm will notice. This should lead to it ranking the image higher in search results.

 

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Go With Trending Topics

It’s always a good idea to jump onto a bandwagon when it comes to any kind of marketing! So, it’s worth taking a look at the trending topics on Instagram and seeing if you can use any of the related info for your next post.

This should make your next post even more visible to a lot of other people.

 

 

Conclusion

Hopefully, this blog post has cleared up everything about Instagram hashtags ###’s for you now.

Once you start to use them correctly, you should start to see a significant increase in business as you will be reaching so many more people.

Not only will your number of followers rise, but you should see a spike in your sales as well!

 

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