No, Instagram hashtags are not dead in 2020 ! Some people claim that they’re lame, other that they don’t work, but at the end of the day, using them is the best way to grow, especially if you have less than 1000 followers.
In this article, I’ll share with you the exact Instagram hashtag cheat sheet to grow several client accounts and improve their engagement rate without buying followers, paying for influencers shoutouts or using similar spammy techniques.
First of all, what you have to keep in mind that hashtags will help you gain more followers, more likes & more importantly, more engagement in 2 main ways :
So, the goal is to get discovered, get noticed, and then provide content interesting enough for people to engage with.
We’re going to do this using what I like to call “The Instagram Snowball Effect.”
You probably thinking, “that’s it ?” Yes, it is ! This strategy is simple, but trust me, it’s not easy. Also,I have to be honest : from what I’ve seen, it works better with small accounts (less than 5K followers). Once you get bigger, you will have to use other methods (giveaways, shoutouts…).
First, your goal is to find a maximum of hashtags related to your content. The bigger your list is, the better it is ! However, don’t compromise quality for quantity.
If you have a niche account that only mentions one topic, it’s not a big deal, but make sure that you have at least 50 hashtags in your list.
Here’s a good method to make your list and find the hashtags you should use :
To find more hashtags, use modifiers such as “of”, using plural instead of singular, adding emojis…
For example, to find hashtags related to cats, you can try :
For example, for our cat account, we’ll draw inspiration from @oscar_the_british_shorthair. At this point, you should have at least 100 hashtags in your list. Now, we need to filter them.
One last thing : make your sure that you’re not using banned hashtags ! To fight against scam accounts, Instagram bans some hashtags. If you use one of them, your post will not be discovered, and you might experience significant temporary loss of visibility on your next posts.
To know which hashtags are banned, you can check this list of banned hashtags here. You can also search the hashtag on Instagram. If you see the “posts hidden” message, it means that the hashtag is banned.
Now obviously, hashtags related to pornography or violence are banned, but some hashtags that might sound innocent also are, so make sure to check ! For example, hashtags such as #desk or #elevator are banned 😯
Now that we have our hashtag list, we need to sort it and make sure that it’s divided in the following categories :
How do you define this ? Well, this depends on your niche and the size of your account. If you have 5000 followers and you get 200 likes on your posts, then #catsofquarantine, an hashtag that has 24.4k posts then it’s a relatively small hashtag for you. On the other hand, if you have 50 followers and your posts barely get more than 10 likes, you’ll have more luck using #catsofquarantine2020, which has only 891 posts.
As a rule of thumb, my advice is to start small. When I work with accounts that have less than 100 followers, I use :
You can start with those guidelines, and then tweak them and make changes to find what works best for your account.
You don't want to lose time filtering and sorting your list yourself ?
I got you ! I built a spreadsheet that will do it automatically for you.
Now that everything is sorted, we can finally use our hashtags 🎉 !
If you’re wondering how, here are my answers to the most common questions I get on this topic :
Remember the spreadsheet I mentioned earlier ? Well, it will also generate a random hashtag set for you 😎
If you use hashtags in your comments, just make sure you add the comment right after publishing the post.
That’s it from me ! If you have any questions, just drop them below and I’ll do my best to answer them .