Best Hashtags For A Small Business On Instagram

Increase your reach and boost brand awareness using simple tricks.

9 min readSep 16, 2022

Do you see those blue letters all over Instagram and want to figure out how to use them? I got you covered.

Today I’m going to tell you why every entrepreneur should use hashtags and show you how to find the best hashtags for your small business Instagram account.

Why are hashtags important for a small business?

Hashtags are a great tool for every small business that wants to reach a new audience and increase brand awareness.

That’s why every small business should have a list of the best hashtags in their toolbox.

But how do collect those “best” hashtags?

What are the best hashtags for a small business?

If you ask Google about “Best hashtags on Instagram”, all the top results will be the same. A bunch of lists of the most common categories.

Something like this:

Small Business:

#smallbusiness
#supportsmallbusiness
#handmade
#shopsmall
#shoplocal
#smallbusinessowner
#entrepreneur
#business
#supportlocal
#fashion
#love
#localbusiness
#etsy
#explorepage
#marketing
#art
#etsyshop
#businessowner
#blackownedbusiness
#homedecor
#instagood
#smallbusinesssupport
#design
#onlineshopping
#womeninbusiness
#startup
#instagram
#explore
#giftideas
#beauty

Entrepreneurs:

#entrepreneur
#business
#motivation
#success
#entrepreneurship
#love
#inspiration
#mindset
#smallbusiness
#goals
#entrepreneurlife
#lifestyle
#marketing
#money
#motivationalquotes
#life
#businessowner
#bhfyp
#quotes
#instagood
#startup
#instagram
#believe
#positivevibes
#motivational
#selflove
#inspire
#hustle
#happiness
#inspirationalquotes

Women in business:

#womeninbusiness
#womenbusiness
#womenbusinessowners
#womenbusinessowner
#femalebusinessowner
#femalebusiness
#femalebusinessowners
#womenbusinessleaders
#womenentrepreneurs
#womenentrepreneur
#girlboss
#ladyboss
#mompreneur
#womensupportingwomen
#bosslady
#bossbabe
#bossbabes
#womeninbiz

Business owner:

#businessowner
#business
#entrepreneur
#smallbusiness
#entrepreneurship
#success
#businesswoman
#motivation
#marketing
#entrepreneurlife
#startup
#money
#businessman
#businesstips
#digitalmarketing
#mindset
#smallbusinessowner
#inspiration
#hustle
#goals
#onlinebusiness
#entrepreneurs

New business:

#newbusiness
#newbusinessowner
#newbusinessventure
#newbusinessowners
#newbusinesses
#startup
#newbusinessopportunity
#newbusinessalert
#newbusinessideas
#newentrepreneur
#newentrepreneurs
#newcompany
#independentbusiness
#newstartup
#newstartups

And many more.

Don’t get me wrong, these are indeed the most popular hashtags in those categories. But that’s exactly why they cannot be “the best.”

The problem with these “best” hashtags is that they are too general and too popular.

Look, there are more than 100 million posts on Instagram with the hashtag #smallbusiness. Every business on the planet, from nail salons to online tutors, uses these hashtags.

Will such a hashtag help your account reach a new audience? No, your post will be buried at the bottom of the feed after 10 seconds.

Do you want your business to compete with tens of thousands of other small businesses from other industries? I don’t think so.

To reach your audience, you have to be as specific as possible. That’s why I think using those “best” hashtags is not the best idea for a small business.

So, let me tell you what I usually advise my clients.

How to find the best hashtags?

My algorithm consists of 4 things:

1. Study your competitors.

Always start with competition analysis. Are you a baker? Great, go and search for some successful bakers. See what hashtags they are using.

Then, after you learned everything you could from the big boys, go and study your local competition. Do you know what hashtags that bakery next door uses? You better!

Studying your competitors is essential when it comes to your progress. Believe me, by the end of your research, you’ll have much more useful information than just hashtags.

2. Follow current trends in your industry

After studying your competition, you’ll most definitely notice some similarities. Two businesses from different areas are using the same unrelated hashtags? That usually means something is happening.

It could be big news everybody talks about, some trending Internet challenge, or even a holiday.

Let’s take the most popular holiday in the world as an example. Every year, sometime around December, everyone starts talking about Christmas. And many small businesses start using it to reach a new audience and increase sales.

You should too!

Remember, trends are your best friends. In today’s online world you have to be aware of them.

Find trends. Study them. And jump on that hype train as soon as possible. It’ll drive you to success.

3. Embrace local and community hashtags

In my opinion, local hashtags are the most important ones for small businesses.

I always recommend my clients to use such hashtags to become a part of their local community.

Does the city’s football team have a hashtag every fan uses during matches? And you know that next Saturday is the most anticipated game of the season? Use it!

Create a special sale for the fans only and use the team’s hashtag in your posts to reach the fans. Remember, fans are passionate. If they like your service, they will be talking about you for days.

Don’t forget that you also can modify popular hashtags and make them local.

For example, our general hashtag #bakery has almost 24M posts. But if you choose something local (like #nycbakery), you’ll see only 52.4k posts. Much less competition and a much more engaged audience. Exactly what you want.

4. Or you can always use online services

Sometimes I feel stuck, sometimes I feel lazy. That’s when I use automation apps.

My usual go-to hashtag generator is Inflact’s one. It’s simple, it’s powerful and it does its job right.

The tool lets you create a list of hashtags using:

a keyword,
a photo,
an Instagram post URL.

I usually only use keywords, because the other two options aren’t useful (at least in my experience).

So, let me show you how to use it.

All you need to do is to choose a keyword. Let’s go with “Instagram Marketing”, for example.

So, you enter your keyword and press “Generate hashtags.”

After that, the service will generate two sets of hashtags:

Similar Hashtags — hashtags with a similar keyword
Related Organic Hashtags — hashtags that are often used with Similar Hashtags.

Each set will be also divided into three sections:

Frequent Hashtags
Average Hashtags
Rare Hashtags

But you cannot use them all because Instagram only allows you to use 30 hashtags in one post.

That’s where the “Smart Selection” function comes in handy.

After you press the button, the app will create the best combination of all 6 lists and give you the list to copy.

After you press “Copy”, you can easily paste the list into your new post.

Don’t forget to check them first before posting, though. These kinds of apps are not perfect. I also recommend sprinkling some local and trending hashtags you found here and there.

Pretty cool, huh? Well, there’s this one thing… Inflact only lets you use it 5 times for free. After that, you have to create an account and pay for the premium.

Although, you can just use incognito mode in your browser to continue using it for free. But you didn’t hear it from me!

There’re other tools, though. Here are some that I used before:

Toolzu. Very similar to the Inflact’s one. It has pretty much the same functionality (except for the Smart Selection option). It’s free, has no limit, and doesn’t require you to register your account.
Best-Hashtags. Using this tool, you only need to provide a single hashtag. Based on it, the service will create a few lists of hashtags with different popularity and also show you similar hashtags. It’s free and no registration is needed.
Sistrix. Another great free tool. But you’ll only get 25 queries a day before you must create an account.

How Small Businesses can promote their own hashtags

Now, when you finally sort out all the general hashtags and chose the best ones for you, let’s talk about something more unique. Let’s discuss your own hashtags.

I think every small business should have a personal hashtag. Why? Because a good personal hashtag makes you stand out. It makes your brand memorable.

Creating a hashtag is easy (you can use your brand name or a slogan), but how do you make people remember it and start associating it with your business?

Just make them use it themselves!

Encourage people to use your hashtags

You worked hard to get the audience, right? So why not use it? It’s simple, really.

All you need to do is provide value. If people see that they can get something out of using your hashtags, they’ll do it.

For example, you can give 10% off to people who use your hashtags, or you can share people’s photos with your hashtags in your Stories.

Use every Instagram tool available

By the way, about Stories. Before that moment, we only considered hashtags to be placed in posts. But who said that captions are the only thing you should be using?

Use your Stories to remind your audience about your hashtag from time to time.

Or you can always paste your hashtags in your account’s bio.

Just start using your personal hashtags as often as possible. But don’t spam too much!

Don’t get shadowbanned

Remember, if you don’t want to lose months of hard work, you have to use hashtags with caution.

Two most important rules here:

Never spam
Never use blacklisted hashtags.

Shadowban is such a dangerous and important topic, I actually wrote an in-depth article about it. If you want to learn more (and you should), make sure to check it out.

How to know if your hashtags are working

After using your hashtags for some time, you probably want to see if they do the job, right? Even though it’s impossible to evaluate each hashtag separately, you can still the results of them working together.

The first sign should be the growth of your account. Use some third-party apps to see if there is a positive progression.

Also, don’t forget to study Instagram Analytics. If your hashtags are working, you should see a noticeable increase in terms of Impressions and Reach.