When you hear ‘Instagram,’ you might think it’s just an app you can use to share pictures and videos with your friends. But as an entrepreneur, it’s a powerful platform that offers a HUGE opportunity to help grow your e-commerce business. If your business already has an Instagram account, but it’s not driving sales, it’s time to revisit that strategy. And today, I will show you how to utilize a secret weapon – carefully curated hashtags.
Contents
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of using Instagram hashtags to grow your brand’s reach, let’s quickly cover what they are. A hashtag is a singular word or phrase with a hash symbol in front. If you’re a frequent social media user, you’ve likely already seen them in action, but if you aren’t, they usually look like this “#.”
So, what’s the point of using a hashtag?
If you post a picture or video on Instagram without a hashtag, you only talk to your existing audience. But you probably want your posts to reach the largest audience possible -and THAT’s why you need to add relevant hashtags to every Instagram post.
Hashtags will open up your content and brand to many new, engaged users to like your content, follow your account, and potentially even purchase something from your store! If you don’t add hashtags to your content, you’ll rely on your existing following to engage with your new post. If you already have a huge following, this isn’t as much of an issue. But if you’re just starting on Instagram, your content likely won’t have a large reach, and you might struggle to achieve decent results.
Now that I’ve explained how Instagram hashtags can help you generate more likes, followers, and ultimately more sales, I’ll show you how to find the best hashtags for your brand. It’s super important to understand that the hashtags you use HAVE to be relevant.
If you sell backpacks, hashtags about unicorns and candy canes aren’t attracting the right kind of attention. Thankfully, there are a couple of online tools which you can use to curate a list of hashtags that are perfect for your business. My favorites are TagBlender, Instagram Tags, and Seekmetrics. Each tool is free, easy to use, and great for finding hashtags lists.
OK, now that you’re convinced that Hashtags are important, and you’ve even found a few to test out… there’s one thing to keep in mind: DON’T OVERDO IT.
Many people get carried away with hashtags and want to put hundreds, even thousands, of hashtags on each Instagram post. Sorry guys, there’s a limit of 30 hashtags per post. Instagram doesn’t just put this rule in place to be jerks -they want to ensure that hashtags aren’t taken advantage of and that the content on Instagram is relevant to its users.
At first, 30 hashtags might seem like a lot, and you might feel you won’t need that many hashtags. However, I recommend that you take full advantage of the full 30 hashtags that you’re allowed to use. Remember, every hashtag you add allows you to attract more engaged users to your content.
Measuring Your Progress
As with all marketing activities, it’s important that you can measure the success of the hashtags you use. If you analyze the performance of the hashtags, you’ll be able to validate your choices with data, and it’s always a good idea to be data-informed. You’ll also be able to identify any hashtags which aren’t performing well for your brand, which can help you to improve your future content by removing the poor performers.
There are tons of tools that you can use to analyze branding performance. Try BrandMentions and Icono square – they’re all great places to start! These tools will analyze your brand mentions, create reports, and track branding success for you!
Instagram Top Tips
Before we finish up, I’m going to share with you some of my favorite Instagram marketing tips. Combine these tips with your carefully curated hashtags, and it’s only a matter of time until your next skyrockets.
1. Engage with your followers
This is a great way to solidify your relationship with existing followers and build trust for your brand. Whether it’s answering a comment on your post or liking a follower’s photo, it doesn’t take much time, but it can help build your instagram audience. After all, it’s called social media for a reason… socialize! Look after your followers, and they’ll look after you.
2. Remember to post frequently!
Building a following on Instagram is tough and even tougher if you don’t post very often. Try to post at least a couple of times every week – it’ll help you to keep your following engaged.
3. Check out the competition!
Look through your competitor’s feeds, note everything you like, and consider what you could do better. Take good ideas and leave the bad. Learn from your competitors.
As Pablo Picasso once said:
“Good artists copy, great artists steal”.
