How to Use Instagram Hashtags for Maximum Exposure

– Instagram hashtags are one of themost misunderstood
features on the platform. So many people do what
I call the spaghettiagainst the wall and
hope it sticks tactic. And we’ve all seen those bad mistakeswhere they’re using #kimkardashianand #love in hopes of getting
found by a ton of people. But there’s a much better
way to be strategicwith hashtags for your business,and we’re gonna unpack
all of that, coming up. We all know that hashtags are
the secret sauce on Instagram,but how many should you use?Where should you use them?Which ones should you use?In this video I am gonna sharewith you my super secret recipeto not only get your
content found more often,but to actually get more
followers and to get more sales. And stick around to the endbecause I’m gonna share with youhow to use very specific hashtagsthat your audience is actually looking forto ensure you get found
by the right peoplefor your business. So when it comes to hashtags,
how many should you use?You can use up to 30,and anything beyond that
won’t show up in search. But your first 30 are free
to use however you want. But should you use 30?Should you use five?Should you use 10?How many should you use?Personally I recommend
using at least 15 to 20. Hashtags are a
use-it-or-lose-it-type tool,meaning if you use the hashtags,there’s a chance you’re gonna get found. If you don’t, there’s no
chance of getting found. So more is better in general. Does that mean you should use all 30?Go for it. Use as many as you can use strategicallyand in relevance to your business. But I do recommend about
15 to 20 as the minimum. Now I know you may be freaking out’cause some people think that’s a lotand it’s hard to come up
with that many hashtags. You might be able to think of threeor four off the top of your head,but how can you come up
with 15 to 20 hashtags?That is where the super
secret recipe comes into play. Here’s the thing. You wanna combine a variety of hashtags. In order to figure out
how popular a hashtag is,if you go into the search on Instagram,go to the magnifying
glass, and start typingin a hashtag in the search results,it will tell you how
many posts are associatedwith each of those hashtags. So you’re gonna wanna pick
three to five popular hashtags. By popular, I define that as somethingin the low- to mid-hundreds of thousands,up to a million posts,
for a specific hashtag. Anything over a million
basically becomes irrelevantto you because it’s so saturatedwith content that the only thingyou’re going to attract are spambots. And we don’t want that. Then you’re gonna pick three
to five moderately popular. These are gonna be hashtags that fallin the kinda high tens of thousandsinto that mid-hundreds of thousands range. And then you’re gonna pick
three to five niche-specific. These are super targeted specificallyto your industry, what you do,the solution you provide, what
your customer is looking for. And then you’re also going to includeyour one to two branded hashtags. That alone, you’re already
up to 12 to 15 hashtagswithout even trying, so you can
easily get to that 15 to 20. Now the key is to find relevant
hashtags for your business. We’re not gonna use
popular hashtags like #loveor #vacation, or something
that’s super popularthat everybody is using, because it’snot related specifically to your businessand it’s too concentrated. Instead we wanna pick somethingthat is very specific to your industry,to the content that you
specifically posted,or what it is you offer as a solution. So now that you’ve picked your hashtags,you know you’re gonna use
all of these different ones,why does this work?The popular hashtags
give you an initial burstof activity from non-followers. But within a matter of seconds,maybe into minutes, your
content is gonna be buriedin the archives of those popular hashtags. So moderately popular
hashtags are gonna keepyou active for hours into days. So it keeps your content
still getting activityand your audience is still likingit as they login to Instagram. So Instagram looks at your contentand goes, wow, your followers are likingit consistently,
non-followers are seeing itand liking it, you’ve
figured this whole thing out. You’re creating great content
that people really like. And then what happens is, in
those niche-specific hashtags,that very super targeted
topics that you chose,you start ranking as
a top-performing post,and top-performing posts can stayin those top placements for months, even,which means if somebody’s lookingfor that specific hashtag,
they go to that search result,and you’re one of the first ones,if not the first one, they see inthat top-performing hashtag tab. And what happens when they see that?They click on your content. They’re now on your profile. They follow you because they realizethat you’re relevant to them. You have a product or a service
that is valuable to them. They may even email you or call youif you have those action buttons
turned on on your profileand you can actually close
sales with this tactic. And I promise you it works. I use this tactic. I have clients and
people that have emailedme after hearing me speak about thisand said, „It works!“I got clients. „I got followers. „So now you know what
hashtags you’re gonna use. You know how many you’re gonna use. Where on Earth do you put them?This is probably the age-old questionsince hashtags have been used
for business on Instagram. Captions or comment, does it matter?In all reality, no. There are various studies out there. Some say it’s slightly advantageousto put it in the caption. Some people wanna put it in the commentbecause they wanna hide it. They don’t wanna look spammy. They just don’t want it in their caption. Here’s the reality. It doesn’t really matter. If you use the hashtag recipe
that we just talked about,with whether you put them in the captionor the comment is not gonna
have a significant impact. It’s not affected by the algorithm. It’s not affected by search results. They both work. The caveat, why I say it
really doesn’t matter,is it does if you’re
using popular hashtags. If you’re using something
which I don’t recommendyou do based on what we just talked about,but if you’re using a
hashtag with five million,10 million, that many types
of posts associated with it,those are the ones you do
wanna put in the caption. Because even in the 10
to 15, maybe 30, secondsit takes you to go and put
that hashtag in a comment,you’re losing all the valuable timein that hashtag cup and
you lose that engagement. In that situation,is it better to leave them in the caption?Yes. Leave them there. They’re more likely to get found quicker,for those high-performing hashtags,but if you wanna put them in the comment,that’s perfectly okay. Now captions actually get truncatedwith a dot-dot-dot more,
so people aren’t seeingyour hashtags in the caption anywaysunless they click the dot-dot-dot moreto read the whole caption. So how do you know if
hashtags are working?Did you show up in search?Did people find your content?Well, the easiest way to do it isto actually go back to the postthat you uploaded to your feed content,and right below ityou’re gonna see the View Insights button. Tap on that button and it’s
gonna open up a little bitof information, and
then you’re gonna swipeup on that little menu
bar, and when you do that,you’re gonna get a whole
bunch of informationthat’s gonna tell you
how that post performed. Down at the bottom it’s gonna tellyou where your impressions came from. And now if you don’t see the optionto click on View Insights, chances areyou’re still a personal profileand View Insights is only availableto business profiles and creator profiles. So if you wanna go ahead and upgradeto that business or creator profile,we have links to instructions onhow to do that down in the
description of this video. I have a post that recently went outand I’ve been found for over 1,200 viewsjust in hashtags alone. So yes, this system works. But it’s entirely possible thatyou may not rank for hashtags,and sometimes that’s because your contentjust isn’t that good. Maybe it’s not performing
well with your followers,and if it’s not performing
well with your followers,why would they show it to non-followers?Maybe it’s something that is in avery saturated environment, where it’sjust not a good time to show upin those specific hashtag results. Don’t base it all off of one post. You wanna go in and look at multiple postsand see how your hashtags are performingfor each of those posts. How many times did you
show up in hashtag searchesand what was the consistency forthose higher-performing posts?Was it something that
was timely and relevant?Was there something that, every timeyou used the color blue in your content,you got better search results?So now it’s time for the bonus. We talked a lot about the
hashtags, but here’s the thing. Most people don’t pick the right hashtagsfor their audience. They only think about their business. And I always use this
example of car insurance,’cause car insurance is
super sexy for Instagram. Who doesn’t wanna go search
for car insurance on Instagram?I’m gonna tell you, nobody. That’s what Google is for. No one’s gonna go to Instagramand look for #carinsurance unlessthey are the competitors who
are selling car insurance. So if that’s what you sell,you don’t wanna use #carinsurance. You’re not gonna attract
your target audience. All you’re going to attract
is your competitors. So instead you wanna think
about where your audience is. What is your audience doing?Who is your audience?If you’re selling car insurance,your audience is people who have cars,and people who have cars are lookingfor things like #dreamcar or #lamborghinior #newcar, #myfirstcar. And if someone’s buying
#myfirstcar, guess what they need. They need car insurance. So you get to show up
where they already areand give them quality content
that’s valuable to themwhere they’re currently hanging out. Now, some industries can get awaywith using hashtags directly relatedto what they do, like
#weddingphotographer. Yes, if I’m looking for
a wedding photographer,I’m going to go look for
that hashtag specifically. So those industries
can use those hashtags. But you still wanna think about peopleoutside of just that realm. If all you do is wedding
photography, that’s great,but people are only gonna be searchingfor you in a very limited scope of time. You can also look at hashtags relatedto geographical locations where you workand other ways to serve your audienceoutside of that very specific timethat they’re looking for your services. So this was a deep-dive
into hashtag strategiesexclusively for the Instagram feed. Now, in this next video we’re gonna talkabout Instagram Story hashtagsbecause it’s a completely
different strategythat you don’t wanna get confused. So go check it out,
I’ll see you over there.