How to know which hashtags are best for your business on Instagram
Are you trying to figure out which hashtags work best for your business on Instagram?
I know that you can use 30, and I used to share the recommendation to use all 30 but I didn’t really have a reliable way to test which ones were really working — and now I do so of course I want to share it with you!
Here’s a video explanation on how:
I used to teach people to use 30 hashtags and test them…but I didn’t really know how to tell which hashtags were successful and which ones weren’t. I didn’t have a system.
Now I have a spreadsheet and a weekly reminder + I do some research every couple of months.
Here’s the whole process step, by step:
Research
Using a mixture of intuition and exploring influencers in your industry, write a list of hashtags you are thinking about using.
Go into “Explore” in Instagram and type the hashtag then have a look at some of the posts associated with that hashtag.
Is that the kind of community you want to be a part of? Are your people here?
Set up your experiment
I love a spreadsheet but even a word document would do.
I have listed:
Hashtag
Number of associated posts
Source (account name or my hunch)
Notes to self about it
Date used
Number of impressions
Make it happen
I like to create a weekly task where I post my content and use hashtags + review the ones I used in the past.
I spend 1.5h a week on my IG content, ads and hashtag experiments.
Review Impressions
In the following week, when I come back to rinse and repeat, I look at the posts I used specific hashtags on, click on “Insights” under the post and see if I had any impressions from the hashtags.
If it doesn’t have impressions from hashtags, then you didn’t have anyone click your post based on the hashtag — simple as that.
Over time you will see which hashtags are gaining you traction and which are not.
Bonus tip:
Pop the hashtag in the first comment after your post, rather than in the post itself — but if you are scheduling don’t worry about this — it’s possibly a priority to protect your time and energy more than have a perfect hashtag placement!
And here’s that spreadsheet I use if you want, you could make a copy of it: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mHUbFyJiiWL8zA7VqNEtz7LuZwWqPUhzTtn3zv--0Uo/edit?usp=sharing
Hit me up with your questions if you have any :)
