Why Hashtags are Important: Frequent Questions for Insta Beginners

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Instagram has undeniably proved itself to be a big hit for all kinds of users, whether it’s a business, an influencer, a creator or just a blogger posting out of curiosity or for fun. With around two billion accounts on the platform, thinking hard of how to make yours stand out is not unreasonable, especially if you’re a newbie. Fret not! There is an easy and efficient way to help your content be more visible and gain exposure. Let’s give a warm applause to Instagram hashtags, an ingeniously brilliant method of enhancing post searchability.

How to Use Hashtags on Instagram

A hashtag is the hash symbol followed by a keyword or phrase that describes or categorizes the content of your post. Posts with the right hashtags will draw in more people who are interested in your topic. This will increase your reach and, if your content is truly valuable, the number of followers, too.

How Hashtags Work On Instagram

Hashtags are a way to group an account’s content. When you apply such a label to your post, you facilitate the search for those who are interested in what you post.

How Many Hashtags Should I Use on Instagram?

You can add up to thirty hashtags per post. It doesn’t mean, though, that you have to attach all thirty. You should keep in mind that not all hashtags are equally good for a post.

First, they should be relevant to what you’re posting. Second, highly frequent hashtags with over one billion uses are not necessarily your best friends. Posts with such super-popular tags may get lost among other content instead of getting more views and likes. Third, the best strategy is to combine frequently, averagely and rarely used hashtags for a better effect.

How to Add Hashtags to an Instagram Post

Just type the hash key followed by your keyword or phrase without spaces. If your hashtag contains several words, for example, ‘living in the country’, you can use the underscore to make the tag more readable and write #living_in_the_country instead of #livinginthecountry.

One of the difficult decisions to make is where to put hashtags in your Instagram post — in the caption or in the first comment. Let’s see why the latter option can be preferable.

 

insta hashtags

Although tags, ideally, are closely related to your post, they are still technical information that should not distract users’ attention from the core content. For this reason, placing hashtags in the first comment seems a good choice.

Your Instagram caption can only be 2,200 characters long, including spaces, bullet points, emojis or whatever else you use to structure and embellish your post. Hashtags ‘swallow up’ part of the precious space making you cut your captions even shorter.

Yet another ‘pro’ is that commenting on a post is one of the ways to promote it and exposing it in front of a larger audience. By commenting on your own post after it’s published you contribute to increasing engagement.

Using individualized hashtags such as ‘#johnsonwoodworking’ or ‘#abby_collins_knitwear’ is one of the instances when the right place for them is the caption — they will logically lead potential customers to your other posts.

Regardless of how exactly you decide to do hashtags in your posts on Instagram, they will be working for you. Just keep experimenting.

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How to Search Hashtags On Instagram

Open the app and tap on the magnifying glass icon in the bottom. Enter your keyword in the search bar and after the results appear choose the # tab. Voila! You’ll see a list of tags containing the keyword and the number of posts using those tags, including the top and recent posts, and reels. If you need to copy hashtags on Instagram and do not know how to do it, you can find all sorts of guides and tips on the web. Wikihow is particularly helpful.

How to Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram

If you’re wondering how to find the best hashtags for Instagram but don’t have time for conducting a thorough research, you can try Inflact’s web-based hashtag generator, a ready-made tool that would offer you trending tags.

This AI-powered service will create hashtags for your post in seconds — just type in a keyword, upload a photo or insert a URL. The tool analyzes the usage of hashtags from its vast database and then takes an informed decision on which ones to show you. This is what the service comes up with for the keyword ‘motivational’, for instance:

motivational hashtags

 

Another way to discover today’s trending Instagram hashtags is to visit Inflact’s top hashtags page. And, depending on your content category or business niche, pick those that suit you best.

how to search for hashtags

Summing it all up, hashtags are crucial for social media because they facilitate searchability of your posts forthe right people. They also make it easier for you to find your target audience and engage with it.

Picture of Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

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