ByThis toolkit includes an ebook of the 6 best hashtag generators, a perfect hashtag checklist, a spreadsheet for adding your hashtags and a hashtag cheatsheet containing 450+ hashtags for 16 different niches. Copy and paste them into your posts to get more likes.
While publishing posts to Instagram, adding several hashtags is a step you must follow. As posts with 11 or more hashtags get the most likes and comments on Instagram.
How do hashtags increase engagement on Instagram?
This increase in engagement occurs because of 2 reasons. One is that people can follow hashtags on Instagram.
When they do this Instagram displays the top performing posts with those hashtags in their newsfeed.
So, more people will see your Instagram posts. This can help your posts get more likes, comments and followers.
Another reason is that hashtags can help you get on the Explore page.
If you don’t know where the Explore page is located you should see it now by clicking on the explorer icon on your Instagram account on your desktop. The icon can be found on the top right area…
…or on the search icon on your Instagram app.
This page shows top trending Instagram posts that you might like based on your past activity. There is a ‘For You’ section where posts on multiple topics are shown and also sections for individual topics.
As you can see above, my Instagram explorer mostly consists of posts with comics, animals, fitness and food as I regularly interact with content on these topics. Instagram also displays topics at the top. If I click on them I can filter out relevant photos.
One of the many factors that helps the Instagram algorithm find posts for your explorer page (that you might like) are hashtags. It likes to show posts that contain hashtags that you have interacted with in the past i.e. the hashtags were added to other posts you have seen, liked, clicked or commented.
Therefore, if you find and add relevant hashtags, your post will have a higher probability of being displayed in the explorer pages of people who will interact with your content.
This is what results in all those likes, comments, reach and followers.
So, you must make it a habit to add 15 to 30 hashtags to every post you publish. But you shouldn’t add them randomly. You should take a very strategic approach and only add very relevant ones.
Go beyond basic relevant Instagram hashtags
Your relevant hashtags must be a combination of very popular hashtags and niche-specific hashtags. As it will be easier for you to get more exposure with niche hashtags which fewer people use than the popular overused ones.
I ask people to use a combination of low competition, medium competition and high compeition hashtags.
Low competition hashtags are hashtags that have been used less than 50,000 times. Medium hashtags are hashtags that have been used 50,000 to 100,000 times. And high competition hashtags are those that have been used more than 100,000 times.
There are also very-high competition hashtags. These are hashtags that have been used more than a million times. You can use a few of these too. But the majority of your hashtags should be composed of low, medium and high competition hashtags.
You can also add 1 or 2 branded hashtags.
So let’s say you are using 20 hashtags in a post. You can use 5 low competition hashtags, 5 medium hashtags, 5 high competition hashtags, 3 very-high competition hashtags and 2 branded hashtags.
Your aim should be to rank for the low competition hashtags initially. And the engagement you receive through them will gradually propel your post to medium and high levels. This is why it is better to use a combination of all three than just one type.
To make it easy for you to categorize your hashtags I have created a hashtag spreadsheet. It comes as part of the Free Instagram hashtag generation toolkit. The toolkit also includes an ebook of the 6 best hashtag generators, a perfect hashtag checklist, and a hashtag cheatsheet containing 450+ hashtags for 16 different niches.
Bonus: Click here to download The Instagram Hashtag Generation Toolkit!For some ideas on how to use a combination of hashtags of different competition levels, you can check out this post from Palmer’s.
They used high competition hashtags such as #coconutoil and #hydratedskin. But they accompanied them with low and medium competition hashtags such as #myglowup, #athomefacial and #coconutradiance. They also used #coconutoilformula which is a branded hashtag.
How to find top and trending Instagram hashtags of different competition levels
Finding several related hashtags for every single post might seem like a very time-consuming process. But it is actually very easy and only takes a few minutes as there is an Instagram hashtag finding tool called Awario that can help you with this. It’s actually a complete social listening tool. But it also helps find hashtags.
All you need to do is visit the Awario website by clicking on the above link and signing up for an account.
It is free to sign up for a 14-day trial and you don’t even need to use your credit card.
After you sign up a popup will appear asking you to create a project. So, create one by typing in your brand/Instagram account name.
Then add two to three words that describe your product/brand. Make sure you pick the most relevant keywords here.
Then in the competitors’ section add a few hashtags that are relevant to your niche. Add the ‘#’ sign and follow it with the keywords.
Then click on ‘Create Project’. Awario will begin analyzing the brand names/keywords you submitted. It can take a few seconds to minutes.
While it is doing this it will open up the Mentions tab. This will show all mentions of the hashtags on social media. But this is not what we want.
So click on ‘Dashboard’. It can be found at the top of the menu on the left.
This will take you to a page where all the mentions of the hashtag can be seen in one place.
To see only Instagram hashtags you will need to filter out mentions on all other networks by using the filter at the top. You can also use the drop-down menu to jump from one hashtag/brand to the other.
You can even adjust the time period in the top right corner.
The topic cloud will then show all the relevant top trending hashtags that have been mentioned in that period. Here’s my topic cloud. As I searched #icecream, it is showing me hashtags related to that topic. If I click on a hashtag I can see every time the hashtag was mentioned on Instagram and the account that mentioned it.
You can use these hashtags in your posts and drive up your engagement. If you want to find even more hashtags, you can create a new alert by typing in the name of an account that used these hashtags.
For example, I found that a restaurant called Black Tap was using the #icecream hashtag repeatedly. So, I created a new alert with their account name on Awario. And now I can see more hashtags that are associated with them.
If you find that these hashtags are relevant to your post, you can use them as well.
This way you should research as many competitors as you can. And then copy and paste the most relevant hashtags into your Instagram posts.
To figure out the competition levels of the hashtags you can use Awario itself or type the hashtags into Instagram. For example, I typed one of the suggestions, #weloveicecream, and here is the result I got.
I would classify this as a low competition hashtag and add it to my spreadsheet. This will make it easy for me to find relevant hashtags in the future.
You too should create a spreadsheet like this. Here you should copy and paste the hashtags to the columns (according to their competition levels). Then write the number of times the hashtag was used in the ‘Number of posts’ column.
In the ‘Result’ column, you can write about your experience with the hashtag after publication (positive or negative). And in the ‘Used in post’ column you add the link to the post.
To make it easy for you I have created a ready to use hashtag spreadsheet. It comes as part of the Free Instagram hashtag generation toolkit. The toolkit also includes an ebook of the 6 best hashtag generators, a perfect hashtag checklist, and a copy and paste hashtag cheatsheet containing 450+ hashtags for 16 different niches.
Bonus: Click here to download The Instagram Hashtag Generation Toolkit!If you browse around the Awario dashboard you will be able to view a lot more useful data. This includes reach, languages, sentiment, top mentions, influencers, etc.
Another great hashtag search tool for finding hashtags quickly is Ingramer. It’s more advanced than Awario for this purpose. I looked up the word(s) ‘naturephototgraphy’ and here is the list of hashtags it provided.
It first shows me some similar hashtags.
And then many more related organic Instagram hashtags.
As you can see it also shares the usage/competition metrics of the hashtags. You can tick the hashtags you like, click on copy and then paste them into your captions.
And if you click on a hashtag it will show you detailed analytics on its usage.
It can also generate hashtags by analyzing a photo or a URL.
You should also create new hashtag tracking alerts for the relevant hashtags using a tool like BrandMentions to find even more new hashtags.
Another tool that can simplify adding hashtags is Tailwind with its Hashtag Finder and Hashtag Lists features. You can try it for free.
Tailwind is an Instagram scheduling app that lets you directly post to your Instagram account from your desktop. After you upload your post, you can quickly add hashtags by using Hashtag Finder. It suggests relevant hashtags by analyzing the image and caption. It will also suggest recently used hashtags.
You can quickly add them by clicking on the suggestions.
Another feature of theirs that can simplify things is Hashtag Lists. This where you pre-create lists of hashtags and quickly add them by clicking on the ‘#’ icon below your post and then adding the list.
Both these features can save you a lot of time. Tailwind has many more features that can help you thrive on Instagram. You can learn about them in this post.
Now find top and trending hashtags to use on Instagram…
This is the process you can use to quickly find top and trending hashtags for Instagram. You can always follow the manual process and find them by directly using Instagram itself. But by using Awario, Ingramer and Tailwind, you should be able to execute it in a few minutes instead of wasting a lot of time.
This will help you get more likes, comments and followers with a smaller effort.
How do you find top and trending hashtags to use on Instagram? Would you like to share your tips with us? Please leave your comments below.
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Bonus: Click here to download The Instagram Hashtag Generation Toolkit!This toolkit includes an ebook of the 6 best hashtag generators, a perfect hashtag checklist, a spreadsheet for adding your hashtags and a hashtag cheatsheet containing 450+ hashtags for 16 different niches. Copy and paste them into your posts to get more likes.
