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Hashtags- most everyone agrees that they’re important, but to what extent? We know that hashtags are essential for not only gaining reach and getting in front of new eyes, but also for building trust with the algorithm and proving that you are a relevant, non-spammy account.
So, how much time should you spend finding the perfect hashtag? And how much emotional energy should you expend? Let’s try to find a place of balance between spending an hour meticulously choosing 12 perfect hashtags of just the right sizes and simply throwing three hashtags together without much thought in 2 seconds.
Hashtag Must-Haves:
Here are the things you need to focus your energy on when adding hashtags to a post:
- Relevancy
- Amount
- Whether or not they are banned.
If your short on time or motivation, these are the three main things to think about. Relevancy is your best friend, no matter how large or small the hashtag, focusing on relevancy will keep you in the good graces of the algorithm. When you choose your hashtags, choose tags that are intensely relevant to both your picture and the subject matter of your caption. Steer clear of tags that aren’t relevant to your specific post, even if they are relevant to your audience or your business.
Don’t use too few. 8 should be the minimum amount of hashtags you use. When you use too few hashtags, you have a much lower chance of ranking for any of them. A maximum of 15 is also good, to ensure that you’re only using relevant tags and not dipping into other tags to fill up space.
Thirdly, if you’re using banned hashtags, your content is getting closer and closer to being shadow-banned and not even shown to your followers. If you find a banned hashtag, edit that post and remove it right away. Here’s a great tool called Hashtastic where you can scan hashtags in bulk to see if any of them are banned.
Hashtag After-Thoughts:
Compared to the 3 things listed above, size is an afterthought. If you’re a smaller account (under 1K followers) try using hashtags that have less than 10K posts. However, if your hashtags are irrelevant or banned, then size doesn’t matter at all.
When you choose your hashtags, don’t stress too much. Let your intuition guide you as you pull up unique, relevant hashtags for each post. You can try to add hashtags that are mostly under 10K, but don’t stress about getting an exact ratio. Don’t use all 1M sized hashtags either though. When you add each hashtag, consider briefly whether or not people who follow that hashtag would like this content if it showed up in their feed.
In conclusion, it’s better to wing it for the sake of relevancy, than to spend hours trying to craft something “perfect” that the algorithm may like today., but not so much tomorrow.
If you could use some help with hashtag research, sign up for the free ebook: The Ultimate Instagram Jumpstart, available here. When you sign up for the email list, you’ll also receive a video on exactly how to do hashtag research. If you’d rather have someone set the foundation for your hashtag research by creating a vast hashtag list for you, check out what’s included in a strategy session here.
