How To Do Hashtag Research For Instagram

Finding which hashtags to use on Instagram can be a daunting task. It is even harder to know which hashtags to select and why. I am demystifying the instagram hashtag research process today. 

For every instagram post that you put on your feed you can include up to 30 hashtags. I recommend choosing somewhere between 15 to 22 hashtags per post. In recent years, instagram started penalizing users for using the same hashtags over and over. I have never been a fan of doing that anyway but it is more important now than ever to separate out hashtags categories based on your post content. Rotating through groups of 15 to 22 hashtags. If you are using a service like Planoly you can add you hashtag groups to the post inside of the software otherwise save them to the notes app on your phone and copy then paste the appropriate category. 

When I do instagram hashtags research I look at hashtags in three different types of categories. Hashtags over 2 million plus posts (high usage), hashtags with 750K to 2 million posts (medium usage) and hashtags with under 750k posts (low usage). Why does this matter? If you are only using high usage hashtags, your post that you utilize those hashtags won’t stay at the top for very long for others to find you, in some instances it might even be seconds. With high usage hashtags the time is in the minutes. In contrast to a low hashtag usage the posts will stay at the top for hours or even days depending on how many users are using that tag. While medium hashtags are usually in the hour realm. 

The whole point of using hashtags is to get the content found. I like to think of hashtags as search terms. When I come up with my hashtags categories for my posts, I typically tie them to the high level categories I created for my macro content. For each of these categories, I like to include a blend of the three different hashtag usage types. Typically just 2 -3 for high usage, 5 – 10 medium usage and 5 -10 low usage. This blend of hashtags will not only keep your content relevant but also keep it found. Extending the life of the content beyond that of the typical instagram post. 

Is it time consuming to do this research, yes, but it is OH so worth it. I update my hashtags every 4 to 5 months to keep them fresh. 

Now let’s dive into how I actually do the research to find these different types of content. 

What questions do you have for me about hashtag research?

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