Instagram Hashtag Guide — How to Use Hashtags to Promote your Business

Hashtags help you target your content at the desired audience, attract potential followers, and increase engagement. Use the top, trending and most relevant hashtags to promote your business on Instagram.

You see hashtags run rampant on literally every social media platform. Be it Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or Pinterest, you cannot ignore the hashtag phenomenon. Interestingly, hashtags have evolved as the leading marketing tactic on Instagram. Here’s your ultimate guide to Instagram Hashtags for marketing your business.

In This Blog:

1. What is a hashtag?
2. Hashtags on Instagram.
3. Hashtag Categories on Instagram.
4. Tips to Devising Strategy for Using Instagram Hashtags
5. Top Instagram Hashtags for Live Streaming

What is a Hashtag?

A hashtag is essentially a single word or an unspaced phrase placed after the ‘#’ symbol. It allows the users to apply dynamic user-generated tagging to classify and categorize a specific theme or content. Technically speaking, a hashtag is a metadata tag that improves the discoverability of your content. Hence, anyone who searches for or clicks on a particular hashtag will be redirected to all the pages that contain that hashtag. Simply put, hashtags help you target your content at the desired audience, attract potential followers, and increase engagement.

Hashtags on Instagram

Instagram hosts a plethora of content, with approximately 95 million photos posted daily, and the like button hits more than 4 billion times every day. Around 500 million people use Instagram stories every day. Delivering the right post to the right audience is a daunting task with such a highly engaging audience base. This is where hashtags do their magic. A well-defined hashtag fetches 12.6% more engagement than a post without a hashtag, increasing your content’s visibility. That said, Instagram hashtags are a powerful mechanism to take your business to new heights.

Hashtag Categories on Instagram

Before you jump onto the bandwagon of throwing away hashtags on your Instagram posts, you must think out the plan strategically. Several categories of hashtags work around the Instagram algorithm, and you, as a marketer, must remain mindful of these while posting your content therein.

Trending Hashtags

These are the top trending hashtags on Instagram. However, they are dynamic and keep constantly changing in real-time. Hence, one hashtag trending right now might go away within minutes or hours. Nevertheless, using trending hashtags in your posts can significantly increase the chances of your content being seen by a massive audience.

For example: #photoftheday, #likeforlike, #instamood

Content Hashtags

Interestingly, content hashtags play a pivotal role in improving the SEO of your post. These are the top hashtags for Instagram directly related to the product or service category that you’re offering. Although they might not necessarily define your brand or business, they are directly related to the type of content you share on Instagram. As you use the most commonly searched terms as best hashtags for Instagram, trending hashtags on Instagram, and popular hashtags on Instagram, the most exposure your post is expected to bank.

For example: #digitalmarketing, #socialmediamarketing, #SEO, #livestreaming

Brand-Specific Hashtags

Although trending and generic content hashtags may immediately bring your post to the limelight, they are also prone to quickly getting lost in the noise of other Instagram posts. It is a good catch, then, to create your brand-specific hashtag that will keep your posts high in the content game. This could be your company name, your tagline, or a short motto unique to your business. Keep them short and classy, easy to remember, and appealing.

For example: KitKat’s #haveabrak; Coca Cola’s #shareacoke; Expedia’s #ThrowMeBack; OneStream Live’s #onestreamlive

Tips to Devising Strategy for Using Instagram Hashtags

1. Search the Relevant Hashtags

Type your related keyword or business in the Instagram search bar. Select the ‘TAGS’ tab. This will show all the relevant hashtags with the number of posts that have used them already. The trick is to use the most popular and widely used hashtag pertinent to your post.

2. Avoid Irrelevant Hashtags

That brings us to the second point. Make sure you don’t get carried away with the popularity of hashtags. A hashtag with 10 million usages might not be relevant to your post. Also, although Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags in a single post, this doesn’t mean you necessarily have to overload your post with all 30. An average of 9 hashtags per post gain maximum engagement. Typically, the majority of the brands use 3–7 best hashtags in their Instagram posts.

3. Conduct a Competitor Analysis

No matter how trending and smartly tailored Insta hashtags you use, you’re doing no good to your business if they are not competitive enough. Keep a watch on the competitor brands as to what hashtags they use. This might even help you find new business hashtags for your list.

4. Use Hashtag Generator Apps

You can use sophisticated hashtag generator apps such as All Hashtag and Display Purposes to find the most popular hashtags that are relevant to your business. You can search, get inspired, and craft a combination of the best hashtags for each of your Instagram posts using these tools.

5. Use Daily Hashtags

Daily hashtags such as #MondayBlues and #TuesdayMotivation can significantly boost engagement around your Instagram posts and help you interact with your target audience.

6. Add Separators Between Caption & Hashtags

You can separate your caption from the hashtags by using some form of separator, such as emojis, bullet points, or period (.). This will give a less cluttered look to your Instagram post.

7. Add Hashtags in your Bio

You can significantly boost your engagement levels by adding a relevant hashtag in your profile’s bio. This will keep your entire profile up in the appropriate category of hashtags.

8. Use Graphical Hashtags

Location hashtags or geographical hashtags are a great way to reach the local and regional audience. What is important to note is that Instagram posts with geographical hashtags enjoy a higher engagement rate than those without one. Small businesses can significantly leverage this opportunity to target their local community audience.

9. Use Hashtags in Insta Stories

You can tap on undiscovered audiences simply by adding top hashtags to your Instagram stories. Instagram users will see all the recent stories on their news feed and search pages for that particular hashtag.

10. Monitor your Hashtag Performance

An Instagram Business Profile allows you to monitor and analyse the performance of your hashtags under “View Insights”. This will particularly help you facilitate in tailoring the best hashtags for your Instagram post.

Top Instagram Hashtags for Live Streaming

Following is a list of the best, trending, and most popular hashtags for live streaming:

#livestream #livestreaming #livestreamer #livestreams #livestreamingvideo #livestreamvideo #twitch #twitchstream #streamer #streaming #stream #livestream #liveshow #twitchgamer #smallstreamer #facebooklive #liveperformance #youtubegaming #liveconcert #twitchgaming #instagramlive #videogaming #youtubelive #podcast

And when streaming through OneStream Live, don’t forget to mention #onestreamlive

Read More: Instagram Hashtag Guide — How to Use Hashtags to Promote your Business

OneStream Live is a cloud-based solution to live stream across 40+ Social Media Platforms simultaneously. For queries and feedback, Live Chat with our team or write to us at care@onestream.live