It’s no secret that your business or brand needs to be active on Instagram — with more than 700 million users, it’s a social network that provides a great marketing platform to reach potential customers from every corner of the world.
If you are on Instagram to promote your brand or business, you are surely at the right place. And for that, you surely have an idea of Instagram Hashtags. Hashtags are everywhere these days. You see them on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and Facebook. As a marketer, you can’t ignore them. Hashtags can expand your content reach, amplify your brand, target your market, get your content found, improve your SEO, and more.
Before knowing how to use these hashtags to gain followers on Instagram fast, first, we need we need to learn what exactly hashtags are?
What is an Instagram Hashtag?
An Instagram hashtag is a word or phrase comprised of letters, numbers, and/or emoji preceded by what was once referred to as the pound symbol (#).
Every Instagram post you create can be accompanied by a short message or caption and a few hashtags. The hashtags help organize and categorize photos and video content, which aids the process of content discovery and optimization. How likely it is to be seen by other users depends on how often the hashtag is used, how popular your post is and how strong your following is.
Now Let’s Learn how to use Instagram hashtags strategically, and how to implement an effective hashtag strategy that boosts the reach of your Instagram marketing campaigns!
1. Use Brand and Campaign Hashtags
A branded hashtag is a hashtag that’s unique to your business. It can be as simple as your company name, tagline, or the name of one of your products or campaigns. Branded hashtags are designed to connect your themes for you and your audience. They can be used to promote a campaign. Your consumers are using your brand tags to connect with you. Be sure to keep checking your Instagram hashtags, just like you would do with your Facebook Page and Twitter mentions. Respond to users’ comments and concerns promptly, and this way, you’ll build happy customer relationships.
Defining a campaign hashtag means a hashtag made for each of your marketing campaigns. For example, Pepsico’s #literoflight campaign.
2. Find the Best Hashtags For Your Account
As Instagram allows you to use up to thirty hashtags, so along with your brand and campaign hashtags, you must find other best hashtags too to promote your brand. For this, you need to research your audience and your competitors. Find out what hashtags your audience and competitors are using and see which ones fit the content that you’re publishing. Your hashtags should be relevant and contain keywords that users are actually searching for. This way you will be able to present your content to a larger audience.
3. Keep Your Brand Hashtags Short and Simple
You need to be very careful when making Hashtags for your brand or business. Try to keep it precise and easy to understand by everyone. That way your fans and customers can easily remember it. You want to be specific, but something like #Americastopbloggersmeetup for a high-end blogger meet-up won’t catch on because it has too many characters. Try to eye catchy with less word as possible.
4. Use Trendy Hashtags
A trending hashtag is a hashtag that becomes very popular. As long as they’re relevant to the post and used sparingly, popular hashtags can help expand your reach without making your efforts look desperate. When you see a trend that relates to your business, engage in it by using the tag. By using a trending tag in your content update, you can potentially get your message seen by a massive audience.
5. Content Hashtags
Try using content hashtags in your posts. These are neither the hashtags that are brand or campaign hashtags nor the trendy hashtags. These are the common words or the common product name or service name you offer. When people search for their specific product tag, they will automatically find you and your product or service. Similarly, you can add an event hashtag, if your business is taking part in a local event. Same in the case of Location Hashtags If you are a locally based business, you need to connect with your local customers through location hashtags.
So these are some of the hashtag strategies that you can use to promote your business or brand through Instagram hashtags game. Let your Hashtags branded, trendy, content based and easy to understand and introduce your business/brand to a much larger audience that you’ve always dreamt of!
