Anyone who wants to get their Instagram account out to more people has some kind of hashtag strategy. That’s why my hashtag worksheet is one of my most popular downloads! But Instagram changes constantly so it’s easy for your hashtag strategy to become outdated. Read on to learn how you should be using hashtags on Instagram today.
The Old Hashtag Strategy Doesn’t Work Anymore
It was the standard for a long time to maximize the number of hashtags you’re allocated per post. Instagram allows 30, so it was wise to use all of them. Some people even had hacks to edit their post later so they could add even more hashtags.
That was then. This is now.
The Instagram algorithm is always changing and morphing in an effort to deliver the best content to it’s users. For influencers, brands and content creators this can be really frustrating! But just take a deep breath and acknowledge that Instagram isn’t “out to get you.” They just want the best , most relevant content to be seen by the right people.
Because of that, adding the same list of 30 hashtags to every single post no longer works. Instead it’s now recommended to use just 3-8 hashtags per post and make them highly specific to that post.
Use Highly Relevant and Specific Hashtags
My main account @tmistick is about me and my dogs so I used to use #agirlandherdog or #girlsbestfriend all the time. But all of my photos don’t show me and my dog. About half of them are of just my dog. So using unrelated hashtags isn’t going to make Instagram want to share it with people.
Instagram wants to build trust with users.
So it makes sense that they want to highlight content that relates to the hashtags used on it. And therefore, they could downplay content that has a huge list of unspecific hashtags in the caption.
You can still keep a list of commonly used hashtags on the notes app on your phone, but these days you should be really selective about which ones you copy and paste over to your caption.
