Very much like Twitter, Instagram uses hashtags to categorize together specific content on relevant topics. On Instagram, hashtags are also catch phrases formed with the “#” symbol in front of the word. Hashtags are important because they help increase social media engagement with new users. Hashtags filter your social media posts to be searchable and linkable. Before taking the time to use hashtags, make sure that hashtags will fit into your strategy. Hashtags are modern, and they show already engaged users that you are relevant and follow what’s on-trend. This will help customers stick around and support your brand longer—especially if your target audience is in a younger demographic. Using hashtags to market your business to customers shows that you follow social media trends and want to extend your reach.

What’s unique about Instagram, is that Instagram allows you to follow hashtags, instead of having to search for a hashtag every time.

Once in the hashtag gallery, you can choose to follow that particular hashtag if you want to. This is important for business owners, as business owners can monitor who follows their hashtag campaigns, see what relevant content people are interested in, and examine what competitors are doing.

This doesn’t mean that your newsfeed will suddenly become flooded with every post that uses that hashtag. Instead, Instagram’s algorithms will sort the content on the hashtag you’re following, and select highlights and content it believes you’re most interested in, filtering out what’s more relevant to you. In order to provide more accurate data for this algorithm, you need to consistently see posts you like in the hashtag results in your feed, give them a like or comment so the algorithm knows you like this type of content and will show you more of it.

The video below will provide more information on how to utilize the hashtag to your advantage:

Continue with the next step:

Instagram: Adding content