Instagram Hashtag Strategies to Grow Your Audience

If you want to reach out to your potential audience on Instagram, publishing posts with random hashtags isn't enough.

You need to use the right Instagram hashtags at the right time for the right audience. And to do that, you need a concrete Instagram hashtag strategy. With a well-planned strategy in place, you can classify your content and get discovered by a wider audience.

This post will help you build a killer Instagram hashtag strategy, boost engagement, gain more followers, and generate revenue.

Instagram Hashtag Strategies for Attracting and Connecting with Your Target Audience

1. Research Hashtags You Want to be Known for

Look for popular hashtags that are relevant to your niche and used by your competitors. Keep a close eye on what other influencers, brands, and businesses like yours are using for driving success.

Doing so should save you hard work and time, and help you create a more effective Instagram marketing strategy. People who search using these hashtags can quickly locate your posts. You could also use a hashtag generator app for better targeting your niche audience with more accurate hashtags.

2. Fine-Tune Hashtags for Segmented Audience

Targeting all your audience at once with a single post is a recipe for disaster. Segment your audience based on their interests and create customized posts with specific hashtags. Knowing your buyer’s persona can help you generate more relevant hashtags for the content you publish.

Here’s an example:

We wanted to reach out to pet lovers and dog lovers. We created a post with a high-quality image and selected some of the relevant hashtags on Instagram, such as #dogstagram, #dogs, #doglovers, etc.‍‍

3. Use the Right Number of Hashtags

5 or 30, how many Instagram hashtags should you be using on each post? Some experts recommend using an average of 11 hashtags for maximum engagement and visibility, while others suggest fewer than 6.

When deciding on the number of hashtags per post, keep this in mind that your ultimate goal is to drive traffic and allow them to engage with your brand.

We suggest experimenting with hashtags and monitoring performance before coming to a conclusion. Depending on the type of content we publish, our Instagram posts contain a varying number of hashtags  — from 12 to 30.

4. Place Your Hashtags Strategically

Clusters of hashtags placed too close to the caption can make your post look ugly, cluttered, and difficult to read. You want to make sure your Instagram posts are readable, and that’s why it’s best to put the hashtags more strategically.

While other businesses use various placement strategies, we prefer adding hashtags after the usual content to convey our message without distracting our followers.

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5. Use Custom Hashtags

Customs hashtags are those that you create to boost your brand visibility. These can be branded hashtags or niche hashtags that are particularly tied to your brand or business and are unique. It’s is a brilliant way to increase brand awareness and offer your followers a way to connect with common Instagram hashtags.

Brands running successful Instagram marketing campaigns often invent and promote branded hashtags and encourage followers to use hashtags to connect with them or share their stories.

If you're using Hashtag Expert, go to configuration and add your custom hashtags under 'Default Hashtags'. That way, all your hashtags will contain campaign or branded hashtags.

Hashtags are highly effective for gaining a massive following on Instagram. With the right execution strategy and the correct set of hashtags, you can drive traffic to your Instagram page and increase brand awareness.