How to use Instagram Hashtags in 2022? How many hashtags should you use to get maximum exposure? The latest update from @creators Instagram page stating that 3-5 hashtags is a magic formula for Instagram growth, created a complete havoc in the community. Here’s our take on this announcement with some useful hashtag tips to help you get back on track with your hashtag strategy.
What’s the whole drama about?
There are a lot of mixed emotions around the advice served by the amazing @creators profile. They’ve given us hashtags dos and don’ts that should help us make the most of adding hashtags to our content, some of which are a sound advice, with two exceptions that has left us all scratching our heads and that is:
Use 3-5 hashtags… And topped it off with „10-20 hashtags will not help you get additional distribution”.
I’m going to give this one a moment of silence as well.
We are very happy to see so many comments of disbelief under this post because hashtags have never been the black or white kind of game, so let’s talk about these numbers!
First and foremost, there is no magic number for hashtags. One size fits all rule doesn’t apply in this ever changing landscape.
Big and popular accounts won’t need as many hashtags as small profiles working to get their content in front of people’s eyes. They have already established their position on the platform and are more discoverable.
Hashtags are still one of the best organic tools to expand the reach of your post’s and you should not be afraid to use them. On top of that, Instagram allows you to put 30 hashtags in your posts so if they didn’t want you to use all of them, why wouldn’t they cap it at 3 or 5?
How should we interpret the @Creator’s advice?
Your hashtag strategy shouldn’t be based on a number. 3 or 5 hashtags can be as ineffective as 30 hashtags if you don’t use them correctly.
Hashtags categorise your content and help Instagram to distribute it to the right people. So the more targeted hashtags you use the better are your chances to get discovered.
Instagram puts a lot of emphasis on the relevance of your content to hashtags you use, so what we really hear from the @creators advice is that you should be focusing on narrowing down your hashtags so they are highly relevant to your videos or images.
More hashtags doesn’t always mean better results. Even if you use 15 hashtags suitable for your content, and the other half of them are completely random and misleading, they will spoil the overall result of your post.
With that said, don’t be afraid to use more than 10 or 20 hashtags as long as they are AGAIN relevant to your content.
Many of you agrees that they are still worth the effort and it would be great to also hear your opinion on our channel so drop a comment below and share your thoughts on this with us. I’m very curious what is your experience with hashtags!
The bottom line from all that has been said is that hashtags work and you should still take advantage of them.
The feedback I hear from Instagram users clearly shows that a lot of you still drive traffic to your profiles using hashtags, and it doesn’t make sense to change something that works.
Improve – yes. Give up on it… No way! 🙂
Of course every single profile needs an individual approach to their hashtag strategy so yes, experiment with the numbers, observe your stats and see what actually works for you best.
Since we touched the concept of hashtags it feels like a good idea to briefly answer the question of how to use hashtags correctly and create a solid foundation for your upgraded hashtag strategy.
1. First of all, do your research – investigate your competitors’ profiles whose account size is similar to yours. Define your target audience and check what hashtags they follow on Instagram.
2. Keep your hashtags fresh – avoid the copy and paste method. Try a couple of new hashtags every time you post to reach new audiences. Also re-using the same set of hashtags looks like spam to the algorithm so that’s definitely a no-go.
3. Use Hashtag search engines to improve your research – we all run out of ideas sometimes, and looking for new niche hashtags every day can be a tiresome job, so give this free Hashtags Search tool a go.
4. Keep your hashtags in the caption – That’s one of the latest advice from Instagram that you should apply in your hashtag strategy right now to increase your chances of ranking higher in the search results. Keywords and hashtags in your captions help the algorithm understand what your profile is all about which leads us to another piece of advice
5. Stop confusing the algorithm – whenever you use random or too generic hashtags you only complicate the process of distributing your content to the right people. Use only highly relevant hashtags to your content, keep them narrow and as niche as possible. Don’t generate spam under some worn off hashtags like „instagirl” or „beautyblogger” used in millions of posts just because they are popular. If a hashtag doesn’t describe your image or video, just leave it for another time or let it go for good.
I hope that now you feel a bit more at ease with the recent @creators’ announcement. They are a legit source of knowledge and we all should follow their updates since everything they tell us comes straight from the guys in charge. However, let’s not blindly follow tips that could be generalised or targeted to creators with the established position on the platform. Every journey is different so test things out and see what approach is best for your growth.
