Ep 43: Instagram Hashtag Best Practices

Feb 09, 2022

On this week's episode of Marketing in 10, we're doing something a little bit different. We're going to talk about Instagram tagging.

Hey everybody. This is Jim Lastinger. Welcome to another episode of Marketing at 10, where we're going to talk through a specific marketing tactic or strategy, and we're going to do it in just 10 minutes or less. And today we're going to do something a little bit different from what I typically talk about. And then we're going to talk about Instagram and tagging or hashtagging best practices.

I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of Instagram. It's always been far more of a fit for me than Facebook. I've never been particularly good at anything related to social media, but it's one of those things that I have to at least be knowledgeable in, to be able to run my agency. Recently, I started a new Instagram account to showcase my record collection. You can take a look at that on Instagram, @somuchvinyl, if you're interested. So I just spent a bunch of time looking through hashtags and figuring out the best ways to get exposure for a brand new account. And these are some of the things that I've learned.

First, there are going to be countless hashtags for your particular niche or interest. If you're just getting started, then pick a few hashtags, say five to 10 per post and see what kind of engagement you get. It kind of feels a little bit spammy to me to put more than 10 hashtags on any post, but that might be okay with you. And it probably varies a little bit by audience as well. Typically, you see people place hashtags in the caption itself, which is what I usually do, but I've been seeing more and more people putting hashtags in a post comment. So it'll be the first comment that shows up on a post. That keeps things a little bit cleaner, but I don't know if it has the same impact or not. That's something you'll probably want to test an experiment.

And when you're actually writing your post, the Instagram app actually tells you how many posts or followers there are for each hashtag as you enter those. And that's kind of important information for you to pay attention to and helps you know what your audience is using the most and helps you kind of pick the best hashtags to maximize your exposure. And I'm not sure how new this is, but it's fairly new, I believe. The Instagram app itself actually lets you put hashtags in your Stories now. If you're like me and you use Stories way more than posts, then that's kind of important to know. Your Stories can get put in a hashtags story, if it gets enough attention or engagement. That hasn't happened to me yet, but hopefully you'll have better luck.

Finally, did you know that you can actually follow a hashtag? That's a pretty good way to see what resonates within your community. And you can see the other types of content that comes through from people using that same hashtag. And you can also take a look at the other hashtags that get put in those posts that might give you some ideas for things that you haven't used yourself.

Okay, that's everything I know about Instagram and hashtags. That's not a lot, but that's what I've learned so far. Hopefully I've given you a couple new things to think about the next time you create a post or a Story. And as usual, I'll have show notes and a transcript available for this, at jimlastinger.com/43. And as always, I really appreciate you taking two minutes to rate and review the podcast. That helps me grow the audience and help more people, which is my ultimate goal.

I've mentioned it before, but I have a bonus available. So I've created a free guide that shows you exactly how to manage your Google Ads accounts in 30 minutes a week. And this is the same process that I use for managing client accounts for the most part, but it's also exactly what I teach my coaching clients. So you can download this for free at jimlastinger.com/guide, jimlastinger.com/guide. And I'll have a link to this in the show notes as well.

That's it for this week's episode, I'll be back soon with another episode of Marketing in 10. Until then, have a great day.

Take control of your Google Ads account. Learn my process for managing your Google Ads account in just 30 minutes a week!

Free Download

Stay connected with news and updates!

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.
Don't worry, your information will not be shared.

We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.