How to Find BEST Hashtags to grow on Instagram

You know that Hashtags are very important to grow your engagement and following on Instagram. In fact, if you watch your Insights on the platform, you’ll see that a large percentage of your likes and views come from the use of your hashtags.

Follow me on Instagram to find out how to look at your Insights from hashtags.

The point of a hashtag is to help you get found. Users on Instagram can now follow hashtags, and often search for content and accounts via hashtags.

But, how do you find the hashtags that are going to help people actually find you, follow you, and like your content? You need to be strategic — hashtags like #love, #instagood and #blessed aren’t going to get you found – they have far too many posts using them making your content gets buried quickly if you do use them.

You also want to be sure to use hashtags relevant to your account and your niche.

Posts with hashtags get more engagement than posts without (*Later.com).

Don’t use more than 30 hashtags, or your post will appear with a blank caption.

So, how do you find the hashtags you should be using? Here are my top three ways to find your hashtags:

LOOK AT YOUR COMPETITOR ACCOUNTS

Make a list of 3-5 competitor accounts and go view their posts and what hashtags they’re using.

Don’t use their branded hashtag (A branded hashtag is one that may be their brand name, their account name, or a campaign hashtag they’ve created).

Look at the hashtags on their posts and make note of the ones you would like to use.

SEARCH YOUR NICHE

Look at your vendors, similar businesses and customer accounts to see what hashtags they are using.

Take a look at least five different accounts and make a list of the hashtags you think you will use.

USE A HASHTAG TOOL

There are several websites available specifically to help you find hashtags in your niche!

Visit all-hashtag.com to help you research which hashtags are performing in your industry.

Keep in mind that when you’re using an automated tool like these, don’t just use all of the suggested hashtags without checking them on Instagram and don’t use ones that don’t apply to you. For example, I searched for related hashtags to #momblogger (for my @modernmama account) on all-hashtag, and several of the suggestions used the word India within the hashtag, which wouldn’t apply to me since I don’t live there, nor is my audience there.

You should now have a list of 30+ hashtags you can use on each post. But here are some really important tips related to using those hashtags:

IMPORTANT:

Don’t use more than 30 hashtags per post!
Use spacing or emojis to separate the hashtags from the content portion of your caption.
Mix ’em up – don’t use the exact same hashtags in every post (Instagram’s algorithm *could* penalize you for this).

EXTRA TIME-SAVING TIP!

Use Text-Replacement in your iPhone to save all of your most used hashtags:

Open Settings
Tap General
Tap Keyboard
Tap Text Replacement
Tap + on the top right of your screen
The Phrase: type out all of your hashtags
Shortcut: type out a short phrase like ‘hashtag’
Tap Save
Now, whenever you type the Shortcut in your Instagram caption, or anywhere on your phone, all of your hashtags will appear, auto-magically!