The Hashtag Debate

How many hashtags should I use and how should I include them in my post? When it comes to social media this question is a constant in the marketing field. With algorithm updates always changing the way Instagram views and judges the quality of the content it's important to stay up to date.

Don't use 30 hashtags. I know you can but let me tell you why you shouldn't. Instagram is now deeming this as spam and wants you to narrow down the intended audience to only those that are gonna like that particular content. Because of what they now basically require by choosing to use 30 hashtags for every post, you could run the risk of lowering your account quality ranking.

"This will prevent you from getting proper reach on each post."

Instead, use 8 to 16 and only use tags related to your post. This will help you decide which hashtags are most important and help Instagram push your content in front of the right people. When the right people see your work they are more likely to engage, which will push your content in front of more people. Instagrams only focus is keeping people on its platform engaging with more ads. The longer you keep people's attention the more your content will be pushed.

Right now it's best to put tags in comments. The reason for this is the clean professional look this gives your post. People are more likely to share and engage with posts that have an esthetic appeal. Make it look clean and clear up the CLUTTER! Another subject to bring up is how to pick winning hashtags.

A winning hashtag selection is a selection of hashtags you've chosen for your post that will get you seen out the door and help you stay on-site for weeks to come. When it comes to selecting hashtags you have to focus on just 3 different traffic sizes. You need a few with sizes up to 100k, a couple for audiences under 1 million, and a few for ones between 1 to 5 million. This caters to immediate and long-term audience viewing via hashtag library.

If you use one like #love for example you are gonna see that it has 2.1B. This means that so many people use this hashtag you'd be lucky to be seen for more than a couple of seconds. You want to be seen for as long as possible to hack the algorithm and stay relevant to Instagram. Use hashtags under 100k to stay on top of hashtag libraries for longer periods of time. The more relevant the better! Hashtags that have under a million are trending hashtags or likely to trend and those of up to 5 million are more common but less viral.

Do you use hashtags?