I like to experiment with using several different sets of hashtags. Sometimes for a/b testing and sometimes for reaching different types of audiences. For @socialgimp_com, a rather boring and small business account promoting a service, it is really one of my most effective ways to reach out to new potential followers.
As with most Instagrammers I struggle with finding relevant hashtags and to manage them all with some logic to it. Since using hashtags is so effective I have been looking for a great tool to help me with this. I didn’t find any great tool — so I built one myself and it is free for you to use as well. Here is how it works.
Discover hashtags
Copy the best
Go and check what the best in your category use. It is no use in exploring Selena Gomez’s posts, or any other A-list celebrity either for that matter — they don’t really need to use any hashtags to grow their accounts. Check out smaller accounts with a high engagement rate instead.
If you use SocialGimp for this task, you can automatically save the hashtags you discover. And here is the great part: You can create your own lists, or categories if you will, to keep track of all hashtags you find. The lists will keep you organized and take your approach to hashtag management to a higher level. Use the list to:
- Group hashtags in to different segments such as “Fashion”, “Makeup” and “Beauty”. “Beaches”, “Surf” and “Sea” e t c.
- Group hashtags within a segment. Chances are that you’ll find more than 30 hashtags and here is an opportunity to test different combinations. High popularity hashtags vs niche hashtags for instacnce.
- Keep your rejected hashtags in one of the lists, name it wisely to something like “Rejected”. Now you can check that you don’t make the same mistake by using a bad hashtag again.
Use a hashtag generator
There are many online hashtag generators online which is great for browsing around and to give you ideas that you might never would have thought of. Of course, we have our very own hashtag generator at SocialGimp as well. This generator takes your own top 10 hashtags and finds the most popular variants, sorted in popularity order.
A tip — don’t just copy the result from any hashtag generator. Do some cherry picking instead and save to a suitable list!
What are your followers using?
I have found many good results when browsing through my followers on some of my INSTAGRAM accounts. Browsing around the followers list is also a good way to learn about your followers in general.
But if you don’t have time for manual labor, I have created another tool for you to quickly find the top 100 hashtags your followers are using, sorted in popularity order.
Use the hashtags
Now when you have already done the hard part, the fun part begins! Testing and rotating your newly created sets of hashtags is rewarding and the result will often surprise you. When I target (using @socialgimp_com) segments of the “Fashion” category for example I only get about half of the engagement I get compared to basically everything else I have tried. For my larger travel related accounts, I got a lot better results with using niched hashtags.
If you use SocialGimp for your hashtag management it is really easy to copy your sets of hashtags to your posts. Just use the “Copy friendly” button and everything works like a breeze from there. Use the word counter and make sure you don’t exceed 30 hashtags which is the limit for INSTAGRAM posts.
There are many discussions around how many hashtags you should use. Some say about 5, some say all of them and I am leaning towards the latter. There is no penalty for using many hashtags in an INSTAGRAM post. In fact, NOT using many hashtags will narrow down the number of people you can potentially reach.
Then there are other discussions around what type of mix you should have when it comes to popular hashtags. Some will preach, randomly it seems and of course without any proof or reference, that you should use 5 to 10 of the most popular hashtags in your category as a part of a set. I say, you will never know this without testing. Make scientific approach and proper research your tools for success and don’t trust bloggers (like me?) that write anything for maximum exposure. At least you know where to find a great tool now, right?
– Olof, SocialGimp Sweden –
