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Marketers ultimate goal for any social media platform they use is to get more exposure, more followers, more content views and likes, more engagement, and more conversions. If you want to get more engagement on Instagram and hence the conversions to boost business profits, you need to build your hashtag strategy more decisively and purposefully.  

Let’s get started!!

Make the Best Use of Hashtags:
First thing first, you need to use hashtags the right way. Whether or not you like the hashtags, they are vital to success on Instagram. People actually do not care about them to be or not-to-be used in your IG content. However, they are exceptionally helpful for your audience engagement and hence, business growth and revenue generation. Use-it or lose-it.

How Many Hashtags to Add: 
The maximum number of hashtags an IG post should contain is 30. There is no restriction; you can go as minimum as you want and as high as 25 or more – the limit is 30. The recommended number is 10-15 minimum. Well, if you don’t use it your content won’t show up in the search. So, better use them. Take the chance and use as many useful hashtags as you can with your every single post.  

Secret Behind the IG Success:
Use the combination of three different types of hashtags combined with your branded hashtags

First, Add 3-5 Popular Hashtags. Here, popular means all those hashtags that are associated with about 500k to a million posts. Use Instagram search to check how many posts are linked to a popular hashtag you selected for your post.

Pro Tip: Avoid using the hashtags with more than a million posts associated with them. Doing so you will be marked as spammed.   

It’s such a fast-moving hashtag hub that when you post something you will be buried in the archive within a matter of seconds. So, it’s not really worth your time and efforts to use something that will not bring you anything good and profitable. Well, a couple of exceptions here include photographers, tourists, etc., that are extremely popular and super saturated on IG.  

Second, use 3-5 moderately popular hashtags. These are the hashtags that have tens of thousands to 500k posts associated with them.

Third, use 3-5 niche-specific hashtags. Related to your industry, these hashtags specifically work with the solution you offer to the target audience you serve. Be it a product or service, these hashtags are related to your provided solution in your business niche. These hashtags bring the most precise audience to your posts; these are the exact people looking for your products/services. 

Finally, 1-2 branded hashtags. As the name implies, these hashtags are specific to your brand. For instance, we use #arhamsoft #arhamsoftsolutions, etc. You should use it according to your business and that could be a tagline or something related to your product or service name.

You can use more hashtags, but these numbers in each hashtag bucket are pretty cool to use.

Now, you may ask why we need to segregate and use hashtags this way. The most obvious thing to ponder upon is how Instagram works.  

How Does This Strategy Bring you Consistent and Effective Results?

When you create content for your IG channel, your followers immediately start interacting with it. But, for the non-followers to interact with that content you need hashtags. This target audience of yours will find your content through your strategically used hashtags.

Here comes the significance of using popular hashtags, which gives a boom to your content and people start viewing your posts in their busy feed with lots of other things they are interested in or looking for. It will give your content a positive IG algorithm ranking for people who are not following – these people are now more likely to follow you, and interact with your content in multiple ways. But the downside of these hashtags is that they’re associated content disappears within a few minutes.

Popular hashtags are great on the short hand. So, for a long-term strategy you need to incorporate moderately popular hashtags. It keeps your content actively appearing in the news feed for hours. People can see your posts for a longer period of time – even up to a day or two.

To expand your reach to the precisely accurate audience looking for your products and/or services, niche-specific hashtags come into play. With these keywords, you don’t have loads of competition. Now, with your high-performing content because of popular and moderate hashtags when combined with niche-specific hashtags, you will be having your posts ranked first or maybe second or third in IG’s niche-specific hubs.

What’s beneficial in this? Your content will stay in the news feed for weeks and even months because it’s still performing well compared to the other content you see in that niche.

When people see you ranking high in their searched niche, they can like, comment or follow you, or click on that email or call button, etc.

What’s next? Yes, you will be getting conversions and sales.

For more optimal results you need to be consistent with this hashtag strategy.

In brief, to create quality content that applies to a lot of people and shows more content to more people is where those hashtags come. Popular hashtags are for initial burst activity, moderate hashtags keep you active over a period of time, while niche related hashtags will catch the specific audience you need for sales. Mix and match your content and hashtags and give your target audience exactly what they are looking for. Keep everything relevant to what people are finding and not necessarily what you want to show them.