A Marketer's Complete Guide To Top Instagram Hashtags: 11 Best Practices

How To Leverage Top Instagram Hashtags As Part Of Your Instagram Influencer Marketing Strategy

What Is An Instagram Hashtag?

Comprised of letters, numbers, or emojis and preceded with a pound sign (#), Instagram hashtags enable Instagram to sort and organize the platform’s content, making it easier for users to filter topics.

Instagram hashtags are a crucial tool for the blossoming Instagram influencer marketing industry. While they certainly aren’t the be-all and end-all, they are significant drivers for finding an engaged audience for your brand’s content, as well as raising brand awareness.

Similar to search terms, the more generic the Instagram hashtag, the broader your reach. The more specific and niche Instagram hashtags are, the more targeted your audience will be.

If you’re not using Instagram hashtags, then you should jot down notes from our guide to bring your hashtag game up to scratch.

Are Instagram Hashtags Important For Business?

If you live and die by post views, then hashtags are bettered by several other metrics in bringing eyeballs to content, such as comments, followers, and likes.

Nonetheless, Instagram hashtags remain valuable marketing tools because of the other benefits that they bring to a business, including:

1. Categorizing Content: Instagram is effectively better optimized for users to search and discover your post through Instagram hashtags.
2. Content Reach: Specific hashtags may give you fewer potential impressions than broader hashtags, but they also provide inroads to coveted qualified traffic.
3. Cross-Channel Content: Brands can develop a strategic cross-channel presence with universal hashtags.

Do Instagram Hashtags Effect Engagement?

Instagram hashtags are useful for searchability and reach, but do they have a positive impact on post engagement? Not necessarily.

In a recent analysis, Trust Insights collected 1,590,037 Instagram posts and found that there was an average of about 3 hashtags used per post. In determining which factors matter most to generate more post views, hashtag usage had no statistical relationship. In other words, using more hashtags does not correlate with higher engagement.

Do Influencer Sponsored Hashtags Increase Engagement?

That said, the sponsored hashtag “#ad” generates the highest average engagement. This means that while the hashtag by itself may not increase potential reach, properly disclosed sponsored posts with #ad rack up more likes and comments. So, Instagram influencer marketing is effective in that audiences are engaging with the sponsored content.

When Should Your Brand Use Instagram Hashtags?

When crafting an Instagram influencer marketing strategy, marketers use Instagram hashtags to cultivate and engage their target audience. Hashtag usage typically covers a wide range of goals, and can be implemented in various ways:

1. Awareness

Hashtags increase brand awareness, either by using words or catchphrases that resonate with your audience or with branded tags to boost social engagement. In either case, Instagram hashtags are designed to push promotional content in front of followers and potential customers.

2. Bio

On your Instagram Business profile, share your brand message with followers by featuring an Instagram hashtag central to your brand, as REI does. You can also invite them to show interest in your ambitions by using the hashtag as well.

3. Instagram Stories

Using hashtags in Instagram Stories is more versatile than other platforms, such as Snapchat, and extremely useful for catching the attention of more viewers in a creative and visual way. When influencers use your branded hashtag in their Stories, your campaign will be more cohesive.

4. Events

Event-based hashtags drum up interest in your brand’s events, while also generating anticipation among your brand and influencers’ followers.

5. Geographical

While different from geotags, geographical hashtags help brands reach local or geographically-relevant audiences—a particularly useful feature in Stories and for travel brands.

6. CTA

Generate interest in contests, causes, or other campaigns with hashtags that call followers to action by using actionable hashtags, like Neutrogena’s #ShowMeYourDay, or REI’s #OptOutside. These hashtags work exceptionally well in direct response influencer marketing campaigns.

7. Product Launches

Using hashtags for product launches effectively raises interest in your product and can drive conversions when influencers naturally implement them in their sponsored content.

8. Cross-Channel Presence

Use your hashtags across different social media channels and create a consistent brand message on all your active social networks.

9. Niche Audience

Specific hashtags will narrow down your audience, meaning your content is more accessible to those who want to see it. When used correctly, targeting niche hashtags will help bring in better-qualified traffic.

Top 50 Instagram Hashtags In 2019

Below is a list of the top 50 Instagram hashtags in 2019. Relying on generic hashtags like these will have your Instagram influencer marketing campaign competing with millions of daily posts. While none of these should be your brand’s main Instagram hashtag, marketers will benefit from knowing which ones are trending among Instagram users.

1. #love – 1.5 billion posts
2. #instagood- 950 million posts
3. #photooftheday – 647 million posts
4. #fashion – 647 million posts
5. #beautiful – 566 million posts
6. #happy – 505 million posts
7. #cute – 494 million posts
8. #like4like – 487 million posts
9. #art – 479 million posts
10. #tbt – 475 million posts
11. #picoftheday – 475 million posts
12. #followme – 469 million posts
13. #follow – 462 million posts
14. #nature – 403 million posts
15. #summer – 393 million posts
16. #repost – 390 million posts
17. #photography – 390 million posts
18. #me – 387 million posts
19. #selfie – 383 million posts
20. #travel – 383 million posts
21. #instadaily – 382 million posts
22. #style – 377 million posts
23. #friends – 355 million posts
24. #girl – 347 million posts
25. #fun – 339 million posts
26. #fitness – 328 million posts
27. #food – 327 million posts
28. #instagram – 326 million posts
29. #instalike – 318 million posts
30. #smile – 317 million posts
31. #family – 308 million posts
32. #likeforlike – 301 million posts
33. #beauty – 301 million posts
34. #life – 279 million posts
35. #follow4follow – 274 million posts
36. #photo – 261 million posts
37. #igers – 256 million posts
38. #amazing – 251 million posts
39. #nofilter – 248 million posts
40. #music – 248 million posts
41. #ootd – 242 million posts
42. #tagsforlikes – 222 million posts
43. #sun – 216 million posts
44. #beach – 214 million posts
45. #dog – 213 million posts
46. #followforfollow – 211 million posts
47. #sunset – 209 million posts
48. #vscocam – 197 million posts
49. #sky – 195 million posts
50. #bestoftheday – 185 million posts

11 Ways Brands Can Use Top Instagram Hashtags For Influencer Marketing

1. Generate Instagram Hashtags Using Free Tools

Why do you need help with Instagram hashtags? Well, using hashtags is something of a science on Instagram; the platform’s algorithm will penalize you if your tags are repeated from one upload to another.

Hashtag generators, like All Hashtag and Instavast, are useful for avoiding a faux pas like this. Hashtag generator tools liven up the hashtags you use and give you insight into top trending and live hashtags that are best suited to your brand’s content.

2. Find Trending Instagram Hashtags

Finding trending hashtags that relate to your content allows you to keep a pulse of what’s popular and what you can key into. Looking at Instagram’s ‘Explore’ section is a good start, which displays the top trending content and hashtags.

In addition, there are a plethora of social media monitoring tools to help you find trending hashtags, as well as analyze other metrics on social media platforms. Ultimately, you’ll want to use trending hashtags for inspiration—don’t just use what’s already out there. Otherwise, your hashtag campaign will get buried beneath the noise.

3. Follow Instagram Hashtags

Did you know you can follow hashtags on Instagram? If not, then you should start doing so to monitor what’s of interest to your brand. This enables Instagram’s algorithm to populate your Explore feed with topics that are relevant to the top Instagram hashtags that you follow.

Following hashtags also gives you the opportunity to understand what kinds of influencers and brands (and regular users) use that hashtag, providing you with audience insights, content ideas, or even potential influencers to partner with.

4. Create Branded Instagram Hashtags

 

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Instead of following only top Instagram hashtags and using them in your campaigns, we strongly suggest making your own. Be clever by crafting a unique, funny, silly, or meaningful hashtag. Additionally, don’t be afraid to use your branded Instagram hashtags with individual influencer partners as well as broader branding initiatives.If you establish a branded hashtag, be sure to follow through and continue to use it in influencer content and encourage followers to create user-generated content with the hashtag. Involve it as much as possible as the connecting tissue across your uploads to help followers engage in your brand and its message.

5. Measure Instagram Hashtag Performance

Keeping tabs on the performance of Instagram hashtags can give you insight into which ones work best for your Instagram influencer marketing campaigns. Use free hashtag tracking tools, like Social Searcher to help you measure the reach of your hashtags, the engagement of those tags, and the top influencers on Instagram who use them.

This way, you’ll have a firmer grasp of which Instagram hashtags are the most effective in your influencer marketing campaigns and with which audiences.

6. Use Hashtags In Instagram Stories

In Instagram Stories, brands can use hashtags in stickers, text, or through the location tag.

Most locations aggregate their Instagram Stories, so by putting yourself out there with a geotag, you can get your brand some much-needed exposure in a given location by being part of a location’s highlight reel. This is especially useful for events and a great way of raising awareness in a specific area.

Try peppering your business Stories with branded hashtags as a way to engage your current audience even more, but remember to add a personal touch. Instagram Stories are premised on authenticity, so be sure to connect with your audience by analyzing how they use and engage with hashtags organically. These hashtags will also weave a consistent story and messaging across influencer sponsored Stories, allowing your brand to tap into their audience’s interests.

Pro Tip: Ask influencers to add the “Swipe Up” or “See More” tag to their sponsored Stories to direct users to a dedicated landing page on your site, the product page, or their sponsored blog post. For example, The DIY Mommy posted a regular in-feed sponsored post and a sponsored Story that links out to her sponsored blog post.

7. Use Solid Captions To Boost Resonance Of Hashtag Messaging

Making sure you’re using Instagram captions correctly and to their fullest potential is a must for Instagram influencer marketing. A strong caption, in addition to your hashtags, will give a welcome boost to audience engagement. Take for example

Like captions, hashtags can be used to provoke a response from audiences, generally through posing questions to them or by using a strong call to action. When used together, they improve engagement with and resonance of your posts. See our guide to writing good Instagram captions to optimize your Instagram messaging.

8. Promote Instagram Hashtags Cross-Channel

Instagram may be your primary platform, but don’t neglect the many other social media networks out there. You can broaden your reach by promoting your branded hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or even the increasingly popular TikTok.

Promoting Instagram hashtags cross-channel will give you the opportunity to reach other audiences and demographics that might not be possible on Instagram alone, while also solidifying your branded hashtags across multiple platforms that you’re active on.

9. Avoid Overusing Instagram Hashtags

As we mentioned earlier, authenticity is a huge part of influencer marketing, particularly on Instagram. Thus, brands should bear this in mind when advertising on the platform. Users are good at sniffing out fakeness and don’t engage well with it.

Loading up on top hashtags should not be central to your brand’s Instagram influencer marketing strategy. Instead, brands should consider adding hashtags in moderation, as a surplus of spammy, generic, and overtly promotional hashtags can overwhelm and deter audiences.

Instead, opt to use a hashtag generator and make sure that each post uses a variety of hashtags instead of taking a copy-and-paste approach.

10. Include Strong Calls To Action

Having a solid call to action is intimately tied to the engagement your content generates. Be sure to ask questions of your audience, require action to be taken, or leave a link in the description for them to explore.

CTAs can come in a variety of forms. Teasers are a common form of promotion to ignite interest in your brand, while followers can be encouraged to share or tag their friends in your post—a good way of expanding reach among new audiences.

Instagram hashtags are great vehicles for CTAs, so be sure to use one that demands action from your audience (#DareToCreate) and elicits a response to your brand message.

11. Check Your Instagram Hashtag

Finally, make sure you’re not treading on any toes with your hashtag (or tripping over your own feet).

Be sure that it’s not offensive, or that someone else isn’t already using a specific tag for their own campaign. Doublecheck your hashtag for any double meanings, and keep up to date with current events to ensure it’s being used appropriately.

Why Do Brands Need To Use Instagram Hashtags?

Creating hashtags is an art akin to writing clever advertising taglines. With the right balance between catchy prose and professional messaging in Instagram hashtags, brands can achieve more success with their Instagram influencer marketing strategy.

Follow our guide for creating and leveraging Instagram captions and your brand will be on its way to making waves in your next Instagram influencer marketing campaign.