Instagram is a great tool to use to promote your business, as it is a largely expansive social media platform and is very likely to have many potential clients spending hours on using it each day. Most businesses do post pictures to Instagram in order to build up a following, however, they won’t be accessing their full potential reach to their target audience unless they use hashtags on their post.
By just adding a few hashtags to your post, you can gain an average of 12.6% more engagement to your posts. Furthermore, by using the right hashtag and combination of hashtags you can boost your posts even further, gaining more likes and access to a larger audience. Adding hashtags can also increase engagement amongst your posts, and can allow you to create a community of potential customers who all have interest in your products or service.
In order to best optimise your posts, and gain the best use out of hashtags you should follow these 3 steps to make the most out of Instagram Hashtags.
1. Categories
By putting your Hashtags in categories it means that they will be more likely to be seen by your target audience, and hopefully will appeal to them more. By just adding the hashtag of a topic (e.g. #cars) you create more legitimacy within your Instagram post.
2. Brand
A branded hashtag is a hashtag which is specific and unique to a brand. For example for a car dealership called ‘Jonathan’s Classic cars,’ a suitable branded hashtag would be ‘#JonathansClassics’. By branding your hashtags you can reinforce the brand identity of your business, and this means that your business will become more recognised amongst a community on Instagram, leading to more sales.
3. Community
Community hashtags are used for people with similar interests. They are useful to appeal to people who would be likely to use your product/service. For example, if you were selling cars you would aim to appeal to a car-appreciation community, in order to target the right market who would have an interest in the products that your business sell. You could use hashtags such as ‘#carlove’ or ‘#drivers’ to keep your content aimed towards the right audience, in order to boost your business.
Overall, it is good to use a strong mixture of relevant hashtags on your posts to gain interest and boost your Instagram following. Use niche, and branded hashtags in order to build your own personal Instagram following, as well as mainstream hashtags to put your posts in the right places.
Always ensure that you research your audience properly, and keep your hashtags up to date.
