How To Find The Best Instagram Hashtags For Your Brand

The best place to start is to actually think about the type of content your target audience is searching for on Instagram.

To help us create a list of relevant hashtags, we like to use the following search queries:

1. Broad industry or topic
2. Industry niche or topic type
3. Location, if applicable

How Many Hashtags Should You Use?

Well, you can use up to 30 hashtags per post – any more and your post will fail.

Now you don’t need to use 30 hashtags in every post but every time you don’t use a hashtag, you miss out on potential reach.

So, we would suggest you use at least 10-15 hashtags per post.

A study by Track Maven found that Instagram accounts that used at least 9 hashtags per post get 2.5x more engagement per post than accounts that only use one hashtag.

That’s why you should use more hashtags.

To make it super simple, here is our hashtag formula for posting.

• 3-5 Extremely Popular Hashtags

These are hashtags with over 200k posts.

These are typically extremely competitive and top posts change often but offer a wide audience and a quick burst of exposure if you can get in the top posts.

• 3-5 Medium Popular Hashtags

These are hashtags with between 80k to 200k posts.

These are typically less competitive and offer a sustained amount of exposure for longer periods of time.

• 3-5 Niche, Location, or Topic Type Hashtags

These hashtags are specific to your niche within your industry or location.

These are super targeted and are great for building an Instagram following of highly engaged users but often have much lower reach potential.

• 1-2 Branded Hashtags

These are the hashtags specific to your brand and are used for brand building.

This mix will allow you to:

1. gain quick exposure within extremely popular hashtags,
2. sustained exposure within medium popular hashtags,
3. target exposure within niche hashtags, and
4. brand-building exposure with hashtags specific to your company

Remember that the key here is relevance over popularity.

You want the right audience, not any audience. So unless your page is dedicated to Kim Kardashian, fight the urge to use #kimkardashian.

How Do You Know What Hashtags Are Working For You?

If you have an Instagram business account, you can head over to your post insights to view how many impressions came from hashtags, along with other Instagram metrics.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Head over to one of your posts.
2. Right below the post, you will see the “View Insights” button. Click it.
3. This will pull up a small window of information. What you want to do is swipe up on that to reveal a lot more of your post insights.
4. Scroll down a bit and voila, you will see how many impressions came from hashtags if you used any in that post.

What you want to do is to go back through your posts and look for two things:

First, which set of hashtags garnered the most impressions for you.

Second, what type of content worked well for you with those hashtags.

By doing so, you will find a winning combination of content type and hashtags that will grow your Instagram the fastest.

Instagram Hashtag Dos And Don’ts

1. Do Create A Hashtag List For Future Use

You will want to take some time to create a hashtag list by using the search queries we provided earlier and by looking at your competitor hashtags.

By doing so, you cut down on the time needed to find hashtags for every post.

And also, you make it easy for yourself to use different hashtags on different posts but still be effective.

2. Don’t Use The Same Hashtags Repeatedly

It might sound like a great and efficient strategy to use the same hashtags repeatedly on every post.

But, it’s unfortunately against Instagram’s guidelines to post repetitive comments or content.

Doing so will get your content penalized by the Instagram algorithm.

3. Do Create A Branded Hashtag

A branded hashtag is a way to build brand awareness and a community around your business on Instagram.

Your branded hashtag can include your company name, company tagline, or be specific to a mantra that represents your brand.

It’s also a great idea to follow your branded hashtag to keep track of new content that’s being shared by your audience!

4. Don’t Forget To Check Hashtags For Meaning Or A Ban

There are hashtags on Instagram that are banned or hidden.

This means they are flagged by Instagram for breaking community guidelines and will not help your reach if they are used.

Note that seemingly innocent hashtags have been banned such as #elevator.

So, you definitely want to check before you use a hashtag to make sure it is not banned or hidden.

Well, there you have it, a complete hashtag strategy for Instagram.

And if you want to take your Instagram marketing to the next level, simply contact us today to get started!