EPISODE 76 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: YOUR GUIDE TO INSTAGRAM HASHTAGS IN 2021
Sonya:
Hands up who gets stuck on the hashtags or just ends up using the same ones all the time? Are hashtags still important? Do you need to bother? What should you be hashtagging? In this episode, I'm going to take you through the facts for 2021. Welcome to the Boom Your Biz podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre-Reid, and each week, I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate, empower, and inspire business owners and myself along the way.
Sonya:
Thanks for tuning in. I was in a strategy call with a client last week, and she kept bringing the conversation back to what hashtags she should be using on Instagram. I threw a few examples that her, and she said, "But what if I don't like the images that come up when I search for that hashtag?" I asked if they were inappropriate or if she just thought they were ugly. She said ugly. We probably spent another 10 minutes talking about hashtags until finally I just said to her, "Look, hashtags are really not going to have too much influence on your success on Instagram anymore."
Sonya:
I was probably a little bit too dismissive about something I barely think about it anymore, because we have it down pat for ourselves and our clients. But I thought I'd take a step back and put together some facts on what you should and shouldn't be doing with hashtags on Instagram in 2021. First of all, hashtags do help get more eyes on your account. In fact, according to an article by my favorite scheduling tool for Instagram, later.com, a post with at least one Instagram hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag. If you want to go and take a look at how your mix of hashtags has been forming on a business account, head to an individual post and click on insights.
Sonya:
From there, you'll be able to see the number of impressions from hashtags. This means the number of times your post was seen because of those hashtags. Now, I do want to highlight here that impressions means views, and some people could have viewed the post multiple times. It does not mean those individuals that saw your posts because of the hashtag.s for myself and our clients, I'll be honest. A huge percentage of our views does not come from hashtags. This is the reason I told my client not to put so much energy into thinking about hashtags. But it is extra views for free that wouldn't have otherwise occurred. When you're a small business just starting out, or your business is trying to jump on a trend or location specific hashtag, it can be powerful to give yourself the best chance to get these impressions from hashtags.
Sonya:
I recommend using as many as you can. For posts, that means 30 hashtags, for stories, it's 10. Let's talk about the different kinds of hashtags there are for a moment. First of all, we have what I like to refer to as community hashtags. Community hashtags are hashtags that connect like minded users around a specific subject. I would argue this is the most common for those listening to this podcast. Let me give you some examples that I feel that will make everything so much clearer. Hashtags indicating your product or service, like hashtag beauty salon, or hashtag lawyer. Number two, hashtags indicating your niche in your industry, like hashtag wedding makeup, or hashtag family lawyer. Three, hashtags for Instagram communities in your industry, like hashtag lawyers of Instagram, or hashtag beauty therapists of Instagram.
Sonya:
Four, hashtags for special events or seasons, like hashtag Australia Day, or hashtag Queen's birthday long weekend. Hashtags using locations like hashtag beauty salon Albury, or lawyer Hawthorne, or this is the border, that's one we use locally here in Albury Wodonga. Daily hashtags like hashtag Monday motivation, hashtag Tuesday tip, or hashtag throwback Thursday are also another common kind. The next type of hashtag is a branded hashtag and the campaign hashtag. I would say these go hand in hand. This is one that you create that's specific to your company or business or movement.
Sonya:
For example, Nike's would be hashtag Just Do It. It can be even more simple than that and just be your business name. A more human example would be when people have their own wedding hashtag, like hashtag Williams' wedding, or S&S take the plunge. These are terrible examples. I have seen some really funny ones out there, but they're probably not appropriate for this podcast. This can also be a great way to collect user generated content if you are running a specific campaign. However, unless you're a big brand getting a ton of traction with something like this, I would prefer you encourage people to just tag your business instead, particularly with the rise in the popularity of Instagram stories.
Sonya:
If they use your hashtag on an Instagram story, you won't getting a notification, but if they use your handle, which is your @ name, you'll be able to automatically repost that story to your own. The campaign hashtag is similar, but it's usually more a short term trend. You may use it for a particular promotion you're running, such as 12 days of Christmas. Do I think this will likely result in more views for small businesses? Probably not. I think the biggest thing for you to focus on is the first category with the community hashtags. How do you choose what to use? A word of advice, don't bother jumping on the big hashtag trends unless it's something really relevant to your business.
Sonya:
If you are a business that only services a small local area or one country, focus around that. You don't need to be discovered by someone else on the other side of the world, so get a lot more niched with your hashtags. It's better to find and use hashtags that are smaller, more niche, and have an engaged audience that's relevant to your industry, and people that might actually become customers. Here's the method I teach in my Social Media for Small Business workshop. First of all, I write down all of the relevant locations. I'm going to use my hometown as an example here.
Sonya:
I'd be using hashtag Albury, hashtag Albury Wodonga, hashtag Wodonga, hashtag this is the border. Next, I'd incorporate each of these with my industry. That would be hashtag marketing agency Albury, marketing agency Albury Wodonga, marketing agency Wodonga. I could also try this variation with the word marketing, rather than marketing agency, that is. Next, I'd expand this out into my target customers. For example, hashtag small business, small business Albury, small business Wodonga, small business Albury Wodonga. I'd also jump in and do some hashtag research to see what local business groups are using for their hashtags, and then see the volume in each of them.
Sonya:
In this case, I've gone to Business Wodonga and saw that they use the hashtag stronger Wodonga. So, I will add that into the mix. Then we'll also use Business Wodonga and Business Albury. I then turn my attention to what the photo is actually about. It may be a photo shoot for a mechanic, for example. So, I choose hashtags around that, e.g mechanic Albury, mechanic marketing, mechanic photo shoot. If there's a chance, I'd ensure my caption includes a tag of the business we're working with as well, and then also adding the location when you post on the feed as well is really, really important if you are a local business. I would be including all Albury as my location.
Sonya:
Now, here is a pro tip. My favorite page scheduling tool, later.com professional, actually has some really nifty features to make hashtags a breeze. One of these is the suggested hashtag feature, where it will actually pull some options for you based on the other hashtags that you've used. It also gives you the ability to save groups of hashtags when you're scheduling out your content, so it's super easy and quick to insert them. Finally, it will give you a breakdown of how each of the hashtags you use performed on each post. The difference between what Instagram insights provides you and this is that Instagram insights does not give you the information on the individual hashtag. It just gives you the overall impressions from all of the hashtags.
Sonya:
Now, again, I don't think this is a totally necessary thing to focus on, but if you are getting really into the hashtag side of things, the Later Pro account is about 12.50 US a month, from memory, and will make things a lot easier for you, taking away a lot of the guesswork. Another common question I get asked about hashtags on Instagram is where should you put them? That is, do you put them in the main caption, or do you separate them out to the first comment? The answer is, it honestly really does not matter. It doesn't affect the impressions that you're going to get from hashtags. However, I prefer having it in the first comment because it looks so much less spammy and it looks clean. It's also cleaner if you decide to share the post directly across to Facebook.
Sonya:
A lot of people do believe in hashtags on Facebook. However, I do not. There've been some studies done to show it actually results in less engagement, and the thought behind this is that your friends won't typically use hashtags in their Facebook posts. So, when a brand does post with hashtags, people automatically tune out, thinking of some kind of promo. That said though, hashtags in Facebook groups can be a great way of organizing posts. I hope this clears some things up for you around hashtags on Instagram in 2021. For more information on what you should be focusing on when it comes to the gram, check out episode 64. I think a lot of people can spend time putting a ton of energy into something like hashtags that won't really moved the needle for you in business, so go check out that episode to find out what does. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Until next time.