How to Create a Hashtag Strategy That Works
You may have been led to believe that hashtags do nothing for your Instagram accounts, or maybe you have seen others doubling or tripling their reach with hashtags and can’t figure out how to do it yourself.
To create a hashtag strategy that works you want to find relevant hashtags that fit under your content topics, find the right sized hashtags using the 10 by 40 method, create multiple hashtag groups to switch between, post visually appealing content, and update your hashtags regularly.
If you are ready to create a hashtag strategy that is going to bring hundreds and even thousands of more people to your account, then stay tuned as we cover everything you need to know!
Choose Your Content Pillars
The first step is identifying your content pillars. Content pillars are various overarching topics that you post about regularly. Most people have anywhere from 3-5 content pillars.
You can choose more general content pillars such as:
Educational
Entertaining
Inspiring
Promotional
Engagement
Or, you can opt for more specific, niche-related content pillars, making it easier for you during content planning. Here is a breakdown of some of our content pillars for Instagram:
Instagram Hacks/How-Tos
Instagram Strategy Tips
Inspiration for Small Business Owners
Digital Marketing Tips
Once you have established your content pillars you are ready to begin the search for hashtags.
Find Relevant Hashtags
The most important part of finding relevant hashtags is to do your research. Spend time looking through hashtags that have to do with each of your content pillars and pay attention to:
The size of the hashtag
What other people are posting under this hashtag
What the top posts of this hashtag are about
What the images on this hashtag look like
If it is an active or unused hashtag
As you are searching, just keep trying to look up different keywords that relate to your content pillars and even try looking at other people in your industry to see what hashtags they are using. Remember though, you only want hashtags that will make sense for your posts, so if it is completely unrelated to your content, it is not going to work for you.
As you begin to choose these hashtags and create hashtag groups for your content pillars you want to keep in mind the points we make below about hashtag size and variety.
Use the Right Sized Hashtags
As you are doing your research for hashtags, size is everything. Which refers to how many other posts have used that hashtag. The smaller your account, the smaller the hashtags you want to use, otherwise, your post is just going to get lost in a sea of 100,000 other posts.
The key here is to use a variety of different sizes, some smaller, some more medium-sized, and a few popular ones.
The 10 by 40 Hashtag Rule
To determine the best-sized hashtag to use you want to use this rule. To do this, you take your follower count and multiply it by 10 and then take your follower count and multiply it by 40. This will give you a range of how big your hashtags should be.
For example, if you have 2,000 followers, your range would be 20,000 - 80,000.
With this in mind though, I still like to use a few hashtags that may be bigger than within this range, but I never choose ones above 200,000. Save these for when your account has enough followers that your range includes 200,000.
Create 2-5 Hashtag Groups
With all of the above in mind, you then want to take the hashtags you have found that relate to each content pillar and create 2-5 different hashtag groups. If you have a lot of content pillars with content that varies a lot then you are going to want to create more groups.
What to Include in Each Hashtag Group
Within each group you want to break down the hashtags based on 4 categories, making sure you include hashtags from within each category, in each hashtag group.
The categories are:
Niche-Related
#socialmediamarketingtipsandtricks
Industry-Based
#socialmediamarketer
Location-Based
#torontoontario
#torontomarketer
Content-Specific
#igalgorithm
You can also add in a branded hashtag if you want, such as #flairdigitalmarketing.
Breakdown of Hashtag Variety
As you create these groups, aim to have the majority of them be niche-related and industry-related tags that come directly from your content pillars, with 2-3 location-based tags. As for content-specific tags, these are going to be different for every single post and they may be directly from your content pillars or they may be trending hashtags you come across.
I use all 30 hashtags in my groups, with 4 of them being content-specific. You can switch this up as you wish, but this is what has worked for me.
Bonus Tip: Don’t be afraid to repeat hashtags within your groups, if it works it works.
Update Your Strategy With Time
Every 2-3 months you will want to analyze your hashtag strategy, or even sooner if it is not working and less than 15 people are being brought to your post from hashtags.
With time you will want to repeat this strategy and redo your research, edit your groups, edit your content pillars, adjust the size based on your follower count and change up some of the tags that you think may not be working.
Post Appealing Content
With all of this hashtag strategy talk in mind, there is one thing that can make or break whether your amazing hashtag strategy is going to work or not.
Your Content!
If you do not have click-worthy content, all of your research and hashtag groups will be for nothing.
Here are my top tips for making sure your content is appealing and click-worthy:
Make sure the post is easily visible from the grid view, this includes ensuring that you can easily read any words on it
Use imagery that is eye-catching and grabs your attention compared to other posts that use that hashtag
Use fun colours that are not overwhelming to the eye
Make sure the topic is unique and valuable to those looking at the hashtag
Take a look at what makes you click a post on a hashtag and use it for inspiration when you go to make content
Defining your hashtag strategy can take time, however, it is more than worth it when you see your posts bringing in double, triple, or even quadruple the reach that you would have without the right hashtag strategy in place.