If you could cast your mind back to 2012 – Instagram was just getting started and had become the hottest app to have.
We were all using #yolo and #AintNobodyGotTimeForThat – it was a simpler time. Back then, most of us didn’t pay much attention to the relevance of hashtags, how many views they had or how we could use them to actually benefit our pages.
Fast forward to today and most people assume hashtags are either still used in a similar way, or are outdated. But, we’re here to tell you that’s simply not the case.
Here’s our 2024 guide to hashtags.
Develop a quick hashtag strategy
Hashtags have, and probably will, always have relevance. Using them correctly can help get your content out to a wider audience, or a very targeted niche audience.
Here’s some insight into how you develop an amazing quick-fire hashtag strategy, to suit your business and propel your engagement!
How to choose your keywords
Firstly, you need to make note of any keywords and phrases that are relevant to your brand or company. For example, ours could be:
- Marketing Agency
- Social Media Management (or Graphic Design, Web Design or one of our other services)
- Digital Marketing
- Creative Agency
- Office Life
You get the gist, once you’ve got this written, you’re gonna go into Instagram and search these phrases and keywords to see what pops up.
These are your hashtags!
Research relevant hashtag traffic volume
Now, we know this seems easy, but there are way more layers to hashtag research and creating a hashtag strategy – but these take time and patience. We sift through the relevant keywords on instagram and note which are within the posting boundary for us, or our clients.
For example:
‘Client A’ has 10,000 followers. They’re a B2B that manufactures bottles.
Three keywords we’ve found have 1 billion posts, but we’re not going to use that hashtag as it’s likely that our posts would be swimming in a sea of others, and the likelihood of someone seeing it is small.
Two keywords have 100,000 posts, we’re going to use those hashtags because it’s likely that our content will be seen. And it’s more relevant to the target audience!
A niche hashtag will work wonders as it’s more likely to hit your exact target audience.
We also look into hashtags that may be shadow banned, meaning if we use them our posts would likely be hidden. Some hashtags are found to have shady content attached to them and eventually, the algorithm ‘shadow bans’ them to stop that content from getting out to a wider audience.
If you fall into this trap, your entire account can be jeopardised. But with some research and knowledge of the platform, avoiding these isn’t difficult.
Track, test and report
This whole process takes a while, and it’s not something that everyone has time for. But, it’s a process that’s worth its weight in gold.
Take your time to track the progress of your content and report back each time. Eventually, it’ll become obvious which hashtags are working best.
Try sticking with 3-5 hashtags to make things easier to track and report on!
Once you’ve figured out the best hashtags to use, keep tracking them and testing new ones. The nature of hashtags is that the engagement attached to them will come and go. You always need to be on the ball when it comes to changing them.
The best way to track popular hashtags is on social media platforms directly, or by using a social listening tool like Hootsuite, Dash Hudson or Pulsar.
Just like your social media strategy, this will need nurturing and altering when things start slowing down, an effective hashtag strategy will increase engagement and help you build a community with ease.
