Why using hashtags in Instagram’s stories is a big thing!

Marco de Groot
2 min readMay 19, 2017

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While everybody is talking about the face filters “inspired” by Snapchat I think the most value for accounts can be the hashtag linking.

With the new update, you can tag hashtags to the story in 2 ways:

The firest is the add text tool, after you entered a ‘#’ the app will provide you with suggestions. They seem to be coming from your recently used list, becaus ‘#ar’ immediately gives ‘#architecture…’ suggestions for me.

hashtag autocomplete via the add text tool in Instagram stories

The second is the new hashtag sticker

When you add that sticker you can type in the relevant hashtag

And the app will autocomplete that for you.

I’m convinced adding hashtags to your stories will help you get discovered via that hashtag.

Why?

Follow my thoughts…

We know @-mentions in content, stories and even DM influence how the algorithm determines how relevant that content is for you.

Allowing hashtags to be linked to stories gives Instagram the knowledge to tag the content to a specific hashtag.

We’ve seen the location tags being used to show stories in ‘Your city’ on the discover screen next to the Top live.

Add those two together and the next step will be showing relevant stories on top op the hashtag.

Those stories are the first thing someone opening that hashtag will notice and with the right profile picture can get you new visitors.
And if your content is good and relevant, new followers.

Please click the green heart to share and let me know what you think below in the comments!

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Marco de Groot

Architecture lover, minimal photography, symmetry addicted, spiral 🌀 staircase hunter. Always looking around and especially up for geometry. Instagram