Everything You Need to Know About Hashtags!

In this week’s podcast, we are going to be talking all about hashtags! We will be covering: what they are, why you use them, how you can use them to find new followers, how you can use them to attract followers, which ones you shouldn’t use, where you should put them and how many you should use! Key Takeaways Covered In The Podcast • A hashtag is a word you use to collect together people who have a common interest or theme. • Hashtags are great for events because it groups together all the content from everyone who has attended. • Hashtags can be used on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. • You can have up to 30 hashtags on Instagram – try to use between 20 and 30. • It is recommended you use up to 2 hashtags on Twitter and up to 5 hashtags on LinkedIn. • You can put your hashtags in your caption or in the first comment. • Try to leave a space between your caption and the hashtags using a hard return or dots. • Create groups of hashtags for different categories (eg. Travel, family, fun times, books). • Save your groups of hashtags to your notes to use again. • You need to use relevant hashtags and not the same ones over and over. • Use around 5-10 hashtags that are very relevant to your image, then use 20 more general hashtags. • Don’t use many hashtags that are too big or too small/niche – people won’t find you. Try to use hashtags that are over 1,000 but under 1 million. • Research hashtags on Instagram by using the search function – start to type in a word and it will come up with suggestions and how many people have used that hashtag. • Try to think about the hashtags your ideal clients or customers will search for. • Look at what hashtags your competitors are using. • When coming up with your own hashtag – try to keep it really simple and easy. Check to see if other people are using that hashtag – check it hasn’t been used inappropriately or being used actively all the time. • When a hashtag starts to get really popular, you then get spammers who use that hashtag for posts that have no relevance at all. At this point, Instagram then makes the decision to dumb down that hashtag and the effect decreases. • Try to avoid using banned hashtags. • On an Instagram story, you can use up to 10 hashtags. • You can hide your hashtags on Instagram stories by shrinking it down or changing the colour to the background. • You can use hashtags to search for content. • Follow a hashtag if it is something you are interested in or something your customers might be using. • Hashtags are linked so if you click a hashtag it will bring up more content surrounding that topic. • Look at your Instagram insights – it will tell you how many impressions you have got through your hashtags! You may be surprised. The one thing you need to remember above all else… Hashtags can be really useful for not only finding new followers, but also to find out what your followers are using and looking at. Highlights You Simply Can’t Miss • What is a hashtag? 1:39 • Where do you use hashtags? 2:15 • How many hashtags? 2:45 • Using hashtags 4:12 • What to hashtag 7:18 • Hashtag research 11:38 • Using your own hashtag 16:05 • Banned hashtags 17:14 • Using hashtags on Instagram stories 18:51 • Other ways to use hashtags 22:08