What’s the 101?

Hashtags serve as a grouping tool to allow posts of the same topic or theme to be featured together in categorized results when searched. They’re added in the caption of a post, most often following any written content or added immediately as the first comment. 

Why Should you be using them?

When used correctly, hashtags are an excellent tool for growing your audience. They allow people to discover your posts based on the subject matter of your content. They also allow you to target specific audiences.

For example: a local medspa in Denver wants to target followers interested in beauty, they’ll use associated hashtags such as #denverbeauty and #denverblogger. You can track how successful those hashtags were and if new followers were gained by accessing the “view insights” button.

Rules of thumb:

• Quality over Quantity: Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post. While there is no magic number, you should use as many quality hashtags for your post, choosing strategically.
• Irrelevant for Business: If it has nothing to do with your post, don’t use it. Adding irrelevant hashtags to all of your posts could get your account flagged. Even if you feel it’s relevant to your business if it doesn’t directly correlate to the specific post, skip it. Don’t list hashtags of every service on every post, if the post has nothing to do with that service.
• Don’t Be Basic: Using generic and popular hashtags means your post is competing. This means it’s less likely to be seen amongst the high volume of posts for that hashtag. For example, there are 11.1 million posts under #botox (which is banned), whereas #botoxbrowlift contains 8.5 thousand posts.
• Success is Specific: Consider using specific hashtags to target particular searches including location, a type of service, or a product. For example, #orlandoaesthetics is an excellent hashtag for targeting potential clients in the Orlando area. 
• More of a Mix: Make a list of a few core hashtags that represent your brand to use consistently. Then for each post, mix in a few relevant tags. Avoid being repetitive and using the exact same set of tags for each post. This can cause Instagram to impose a shadowban on your account. For example, a post on micro-needling shouldn’t include #lipfiller.

How to check if a hashtag is banned:

• From the explore page on Instagram, type the word or phrase of the hashtag into the search bar. Any matching results will appear in the form of a topic search (magnifying glass icons indicate popular searches), accounts, audio (song titles matching one or more keywords), tags (aka hashtags), and places (geotags specifying the name of a location).
• Select the hashtag icon or tags tab to view results matching your search, and click the specific hashtag. If a message along the lines of “recent posts of that hashtag has been hidden due to reported content not meeting community guidelines” is displayed, it’s an indication that the hashtag is banned. Do NOT use it.

Here’s a list of some commonly used hashtags that are now banned:

#adulting #attractive

#babe #besties #beautyblogger #bikinibody #botox

#dm

#goddess

#humpday

#instamood

#killingit #kissing

#mirrorphoto #models

#parties #prettygirl

#snap #sopretty #sunbathing

#tanlines #tgif #thought

#valentinesday

#woman #womancrushwednesday #women #workflow

For a hashtag hack that is guaranteed to save you time, we invite you to check out this recent reel LINKED HERE