The popularity of Instagram has increased rapidly since it first came into the limelight back in 2010. With its boast of more than a billion users, the platform offers businesses a huge potential audience.
Hashtags are an important part of the platform to be explored by various businesses. A hashtag is a symbol (#) which can be placed before a word or phrase that categorizes a content or makes it more discoverable. Anyone who clicks on a hashtag or searches for something using a hashtag can see a post or page that contains that hashtag.
If used effectively, hashtags allow you to reach your targeted audience and then attract followers in your niche. For instance, did you know an Instagram post with at least one hashtag averages 12.6 per cent more engagement than a post without a hashtag? And you can also use up to 30 hashtags on each Instagram post.
This article will explain the five ways in which you can use hashtags to attract more engagements on Instagram.
1. Use popular hashtags to increase your engagements
Why, well it means that users that are looking at popular hashtags like #greatday may come across your post. You can also use the same process to get more YouTube views and vies on other social media channels too. If the users like what they see, they may even give your account a follow.
There is a caveat, however, as the popular hashtags may have so much content attached to them that your posts might get lost in between. Also if you are a brand, you would probably want to attract a targeted audience rather than just anyone.
In that case, the best way to go about it is to do some research relating to the interest of your audience and then use a mixture of popular hashtags relating to your niche.
2. Find out which hashtags your followers are using
You will find a vast range of demographics on Instagram, which is an important reason why 71% of business is tapping into the social media platform to target new customers. Interestingly, the platform is even popular with older adults, who spend close to 3.3 billion hours on social media.
Once the target audience has been identified, the next step is to do in-depth research and find out what hashtags your target audience is using and what they are searching for, then add these hashtags to your content posts. They are typically lower-volume, but it’s highly relevant.
Let me give you an example, and if you want to reach out to Harry Potter’s fans, you can go a little further than just using the most popular hashtags. After a little research, you will see there is a massive amount of posts that also use that popular hashtags.
These long-tail hashtags and niche-specific hashtags will allow you to reach a broad targeted audience and that will surely be an excellent match for your account.
3. And for your competitors
You can visit your competitor’s accounts and find out the hashtags they use. By doing this, you can also determine which hashtags provide the most engagement or likes.
While you may not want to compare the hashtags you discovered from your competitors, this is still an essential practice as you may find out what your potential customers are talking about and which hashtags they are using and maybe you will come across new hashtags to add to your posts.
4. Use and follow hashtags suggested by Instagram
With the recent update on Instagram, it has allowed users to follow selected hashtags. Instagram recommends some relevant hashtags to its users and the more you engage with these hashtags, the more visibility your profile will get.
Using these popular “followed” hashtags in your relevant posts should further increase the engagements of your contents.
5. Use hashtags on Instagram Stories
You can be able to use hashtags that are on your Instagram stories, so you should take advantage of that. When you upload an image or video to a Story, do well to add the hashtag sticker to it by selecting the sticker icon in the left corner and then ‘#’.
You’re allowed to use up to 10 hashtags on your stories and to avoid overkill on your video or image; you can also make them invisible by changing the colour of the background.
What strategy do you apply to your content to gain more engagements? Tell us by using the comments section below.
