3 Instagram Hashtag Changes You Need to Know

Using pertinent, focused hashtags on your Instagram posts and stories is one of the effective ways to reach new audiences. This can also be an excellent step to develop a community online and encourage people to interact with your brand. However, inaccurate hashtagging can cause harm, ranging from frustrating potential audiences to reprimanding by Instagram's algorithm. To use hashtags smartly on Instagram, you must first fully comprehend how they work and develop a strategy.

These new tactics will help you get the most out of hashtags on the platform.

1. Add Hashtags to the Caption, Not the Comments

Hashtags can be added to either the post caption or the comments. By including hashtags in your captions, you will receive additional engagement as soon as you click the post button, instead of waiting until your comment is written and posted. You can also incorporate line breaks between the major part of your caption and the hashtags for a neater caption. This will maintain your hashtags cleanly tucked away, allowing you to keep a beautiful simplified aesthetic.

2. Keep Hashtags to a Maximum of 3-5 per Post

A regular post can have up to 30 hashtags and a Story can have up to 10. Include as many as you can tactically employ while remaining relevant to your brand. If you try to add more information, your comment or caption will not be posted. The common conclusion is that 11 hashtags is a good starting point. However, the most common number of hashtags used on Instagram is between one and three.

3. Use a Combination of Well-Known and Niche Hashtags

Identifying various types of hashtags and their associated audiences is vital for building an impressive Instagram hashtag strategy. Using a balance of popular and niche hashtags to reach out to a variety of audiences, from broad to specific, is highly recommended. The mainstream hashtags will generate a spike in interest from non-followers at first. Your content, however, will be hidden in the archives of those popular hashtags. With that said, search for ultra-niche community hashtags that are directly related to the content you're posting. You begin to place as a top-performing post in those niche-specific hashtags.