We have been talking a lot about hashtags this month. If you haven’t read the blogs, you can do so here:
How To Use Hashtags To Grow Your Instagram
How To Grow On Instagram with Hashtags
But let’s think about how hashtags actually work…
Hashtags were conceived as a way to categorize social media posts in a way that is searchable. This means that if you were talking about fitness and used the hashtag #fitness, your post would show up along with every other post that used this hashtag with the most recent one being at the top. When Instagram adopted this feature, it changed added the ability to see not only the most recent posts but also the most popular ones. This is the “top posts” tab that is listed when you search a particular hashtag.
In this way, it became a lot easier to find content that suited you instead of sifting through the content of every single person you follow to find something you were looking for.
As hashtags were conceived of as a way to categorize these posts, we need to use them like search terms. You need to think of them from the perspective of the audience you want to attract. What content do they want to consume and what terms are they searching for on Instagram? If you can find out this information, you can use it to your advantage when posting your own content.
This is going to bring me to my first tip:
Use hashtags that are relevant to the subject of your content. Your audience doesn’t want to waste their time by searching for something and then getting something else. They want to know that if they search a term, the most relevant information is being presented to them. This helps keep the integrity of Instagram secure.. And this is why if your content is irrelevant to the hashtag that you post, Instagram will notice, assume you are spamming, and stunt the reach of your post.
However, sometimes your audience doesn’t necessarily know what they are looking for. They may not be searching for content but instead searching for like-minded people. This is why you should also sprinkle in some hashtags that relate to your ideal client.
How does your ideal client see themselves? Are they a female business owner or a boss babe? Are they a stay at home mom with a side hustle or are they a work from home mom?
It’s important to know how your audience self-identifies so that you can target them with content that they need even if it’s not something they knew that they wanted.
(My students from my Social That Sells program keeps hearing me say that marketing is packaging what your customer needs into something that they want)
Your audience may also be searching for more than one thing or there might be multiple terms they are using. This is why you want to use all 30 hashtags. You want the greatest chance of being seen by your ideal audience.
Everyone is out there just trying to find the best information and sticking only to a few hashtags that they know will take them to valuable content. You need to find a bunch so that you can reach all the corners of Instagram that your audience is hanging out in.
And try a bunch. You can’t keep using the same 30 hashtags and still be relevant to your content and audience. If you are then the scope of your content is way too narrow. You need to create multiple groups of 30 based on your most frequently talked about subjects. This means you need a ton of hashtags. If you are talking about 3-4 different subjects in your content, then you need 90-120 hashtags at the ready to put into your posts.
So how do you find the right hashtags for you?
Take all the search terms your audience is looking at and try multiple variations until find the ones that are both relevant to your content & in the search pool (if you don’t know about search pools check out this post)
Create a group of 30 and write a post relevant to the subject matter. After 2-4 hours, see if your hashtag is showing up in the top posts for any of the hashtags. If it is, then it is working for that hashtag. If you are getting a higher reach than normal and more engagement, then this group is working. If you get less engagement but higher reach, it means that the hashtags are working but your content isn’t engaging enough. If engagement and reach are low, it means the content & group did not work and you need to try again.
If you understand this and want to get the step-by-step strategy that will help you find the hashtags your ideal audience is using & know how big or small of search pools to look for, check out my hashtag strategy.
It includes a 35 minute how-to video that will walk you through the process of finding hashtags, grouping them, posting them and how to know if they are working. It also includes a digital workbook to help you keep your hashtags organized.
The clients that have used this strategy have gotten floods of new targeted followers (for free!), doubled their accounts in as little as 2 weeks, booked out their calendars and sold out of their products.
And because I like you, for a limited time, I am offering this strategy at 50% off! I really am just that nice.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a win in 2020? Wouldn’t it be great if something as simple as hashtags could be the catalyst for the growth of your business?
We need more small businesses in the world. I need more small businesses in the world. Let’s make sure small businesses still have a shot at getting noticed and getting paid. Think of it as saving the economy lol
I hope this was helpful and I hope you liked this post. For more content like this, subscribe to my newsletter (I’ll even give you a free copy of my ebook on how to make captions that actually convert) and follow me on Instagram!
