Even to this day I often see people asking what the appropriate/suggested amount of hashtags they should use on Instagram. I’ve always been of the opinion there is no “correct amount”, rather the correct category of hashtags you should use on your content. I honestly cannot remember who originally posted this type of list, but I do know it works really well for the brands we work with. This is what we have seen success with (examples):
Now obviously you can add more to the categories of community & content specific. However, I really like just utilizing one hashtag for each of these six categories, remembering that hashtags aren’t there for reach or your followers. They’re utilized to help non-followers discover your content from search.
What have you seen success with hashtags on Instagram?
Nice list Eddie! I try to think of all the relevant potential hashtags and put them on there. For instagram I don’t think they really hinder you for the amount of hashtags you use.
I feel like hashtags are relevant to reach (even though you say they aren’t there for reach) because it reaches more non-followers if you put the right hashtags there. Just based on my experience with putting the right and relevant hashtags on to reach the correct audience.
I’ve only reached 283 accounts posting pretty much daily for the past 30 days. 271 of them were non-followers, and I feel like the hashtags had a lot to do with that.
I don’t think the hashtags help reach your current followers.
Cheers, Kaz. Yeah, hashtags never were meant to help reach current followers. I’ve just never seen any improvement of performance when I add [insert some magic number here] of hashtags. I’ve tried to stick with these categories and it works for our clients.