We know. Conscious and organic growth can sound SUPER complicated – but believe us when we say: it doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it sounds. It’s essentially a combination of basic content marketing knowledge (keep calm, we’re here to arm you with it!), and analytical skills (which you’ll improve with the practical challenges we’ve prepared for you), so there’s nothing to worry about anymore. You’re on the right track – as you may notice, we love repeating it (hope you don’t mind), but it’s just because IT’S TRUE.
How long does it take…?
“How long does it take to reach 10K (or any multiple of 10K) followers” – is a pretty common question. “Pretty common” = we hear it over twenty times a week, to be honest. Many creators (and business owners as well!) fear that they’ll have to struggle with profile growth for the rest of their lives, and others expect 2-3 months of intense effort put in the content creation and following growth strategy to be enough. So what’s the truth?
Just like with most things in life… There is no one absolute universal truth. Each profile has its own growth pace – it all depends on over twenty different factors (we know you want to ask – yup, we’ll discuss them all in an upcoming post). We also need to remember that different things work for different people. That’s why there’s no one all-purpose blueprint. It may sound a little bit bothersome, but literally, it’s good news: there are plenty of them. We need to personalize them and analyze the details to comprehend the entire situation entirely – so we won’t lie like many marketing gurus do: there is more than one effective strategy.
But back to the core: today’s article actually won’t be about that! There is one tool that is beneficial for every niche, every business type. You’re right: HASHTAGS!
Hashtags are here to guide you.
Okay, we know, it sounds a bit mysterious and cliche at the same time, but actually, that’s not a catchy slogan, but the genuine truth. Let us explain. The primary role of hashtags is to make your content discoverable – meaning, people who are looking for inspiration or insights from your niche, can find you and come across your profile without HUGE effort.
Hashtags organize the content you post into a pool of other posts: photos, graphics, carousels, and videos described with the same keyword. For example, #instagramtipsandtricks categorizes your content and allows content marketing lovers searching that hashtag to see what you’re posting, even if they’re not your followers. That’s why hashtags are so powerful: they boost your reach, improve your engagement, and help you increase your follower base. Sounds beneficial, huh?
So how to use these pound signs to make the most of them? We promise that if you apply our techniques, you’ll be able to create a profile that stands out, grow organically, and gather an engaged audience – are you ready to dive deeper? Everyone is dying to know: how does the effective hashtag strategy actually work? Here’s everything we know (and a few theories as well!):
We are all on a bit of a different path; we all have a different mission and goals, we all have a different target market. With these things in mind, we have to say: everyone needs to develop their own strategy. But what we can do is teach you how to do it + how to use our proven to work and most effective methods to find the hashtags that are going to boost engagement, specifically for you.
First things first: what are you creating?
Who is your target audience?
To make the first shift: from a hobby to business-oriented online activities, you need to analyze:
- WHOM your business will serve and what you’re offering them?
- Who will mostly benefit from the content you post?
- Who are you thinking about when you’re preparing new content?
When you have clear answers, we need to find out how to reach THESE PEOPLE. They’re your number one – you need to attract them, you need them to come across your profile, so you can serve them (and they can become your loyal followers, win-win).
How to do it? You’ll never have to waste time scratching your head saying, “how the hell can I do it”, because we’re here. We want to take you by the hand and walk you through our proven list “HASHTAG STRATEGY building” step-by-step!
When you use our methods and avoid the mistakes we’re writing about, you’ll quickly find out that this whole ‘grow your Instagram’ thing is FAR simpler than you’ve been making it out to be. Keep our word, and let’s begin.
Whenever you fight the urge to add #love, #happy, #smile hashtags, ask yourself two questions:
- Are the people from your target audience, the most valuable followers you’re looking for, browsing these hashtags’ explore pages?
- don’t you mind looking a bit spammy? These hashtags are actually overly popular, and your post is going to be buried with THOUSAND of posts published at precisely the same time. So let us be brutally honest: they won’t work, and they’re most probably the waste of space in your caption.
Why is it so important? Potential followers from your target audience are the people you think would be interested in what you have to say/show. To build an engaged tribe on Instagram, you need to always keep those people in mind and to be preparing new content specifically for them. Yup. Everything you do – you should do mostly for them.
These targeted users are the ones who are most likely to TRULY enjoy your post (not just one single post, but many of them!), and the chances of them following your profile are very high then. This strategy is over 1000 times more beneficial than attracting random people because people from your target audience will stay with you, because you’re creating what they NEED.
Don’t skip the hashtag research – in-depth research is your good friend. It can be your BEST friend if you want.
You already know it: you need engaged followers from your target audience.
What do you need as well?
Quality hashtags that precisely align with this target audience.
We love sharing tips and tricks that help you save your precious time, so we have to say: hashtag research can be time-consuming, won’t ever deny it. That’s why it’s totally okay to outsource it, and help yourself by using tools that are designed to make this process much easier and quicker. There are many ones out there – but the one we always recommend is IQ Hashtags, because it has much wider functionality than any other. It’s one web app, with so many different features: actually all you need to develop a working hashtag strategy. We love the fact that it lets you look for hashtags relevant to the size and theme of your account + you can also overview which hashtags are currently trending on the Gram.
Let us know if you’d like us to prepare the extended tool guide – with some life hacks to make the most of this tool!
Don’t fall into the trap of overusing the overly popular hashtags
The volume or popularity of the hashtags you choose is what’s really crucial.
You may already know it from our previous articles (because we always emphasize the importance of it!) – when you use a hiper-popular hashtag, your freshly published content gets lost in the sea of competition within SECONDS, at the speed of light.
#Instagramers has 90.6m posts attached to it. It means that while SO MANY people choose and look for that hashtag, your post will be added to a HUGE collection of content, full of spammy competition. Let’s pick another hashtag, more niched down. #Instagramforbusiness has 175k posts. Considerably better! This hashtag gives you much higher chances of standing out. The aim is to reach specialized, engaged people, not the random ones, remember?
Keep up with new trends
This is an excellent way to gain engaged followers, too.
What does it mean for an Instagram hashtag to become “trending”?
Trending hashtag is the one that isn’t already overly popular (it would be a red flag!), but it’s gaining popularity and more and more people are starting to use it.
But how to find out which ones are trending and which aren’t?
You can check which hashtags are trending in your niche right now with the analytics & monitoring tool – for example with our fav IQ Hashtags tool. It’s one of the REALLY reliable sources, as they use AI to keep up with all the trends.
Additional benefits? Using trending hashtags can get your message across to a much wider audience (highly relevant audience, that is interested in what you have to say!)
Give it a shot and see how it goes! With a bit of practice, hashtags can help you expand your reach, boost all your stats, and gain much more traction. We hope our insights help you with your hashtag strategy moving forward!
Are you happy with your current stats? What are you struggling with the most? We’re always here to listen: let’s chat in the comments!
