Instagram Hashtags: How to get more Reach and Engagement in 2023

In this post, I’m going to show you EXACTLY how to get more Reach and Engagement of your on Posts using Instagram Hashtags.

In fact, this is the exact process that I’ve used to get my posts discovered by at least 10,000 people even on small accounts.

So if you want to get more Reach, Engagement, and Followers from your Instagram Post, then you’ll love this new Instagram Hashtags tutorial.

Let’s dive right in…

How I Boost My Instagram Posts Using Hashtags

Over some time now, I’m sure you’ve noticed that Instagram posts don’t usually perform as they did 3 or 4 years back.

It’s not as easy as it used to be, to reach in front of thousands of people, especially if you own a Small account.

I’m sure you’ve seen accounts or you might even own an account with, let’s say 10,352 Followers, and gets an average of 42 likes per post.

You must think to yourself, something must be wrong here.

Well, Creating Good Content is one thing, making Sure your Content Reaches your Audience is another, which is also crucial.

I also had the same challenges.

Then, I discovered the Instagram Hashtags Strategy.

It has increased my Post Engagement, Saves and has also increased my Page Followers by 1110 followers every month.

Now that you can see that I know what I’m talking about, let’s dive into the steps I used to get these results

Step #1: Instagram Hashtags Research

The Process begins with Instagram Hashtags Research

Here’s exactly how to find the right Hashtags for your Instagram Post.

First, Generate a list of Keywords Specific to your account.

Your first step is to write down a list of Keywords related to your accounts.

Like the Niche you are into, your Location, and your Target Audience.

For instance, If you run a business account for a Clothing Brand in Nigeria targeted at young Adults, your keywords could be;

• T-shirts, Face Caps.
• Kano, Lagos, Enugu.
• Abuja Men, Futminna Students, Fashion Lovers in Lagos.

This could be more like describing your target audience.

In my experience, having 3 to 7 keywords would do just fine.

Second, Use your keywords to get potential Hashtags.

Now, it’s time to use your keywords to generate Hashtags.

At the end of the Hashtags Research, you should have three to six different types of hashtags.

• Audience Descriptive Hashtags: These are Hashtags that describes your Audience. eg. #fashionlovers #entrepreneurs
• Product descriptive Hashtags: These are Hashtags that describe your Products. #ankarashirts #baseballcaps.
• Niche Hashtags: #fashion #tshirts #caps
• Location Hashtags: #minna #mauritius #kualalumpur #newyork
• Brand or Curators Hashtags: #batefego #nike #trendsleek
• Event Hashtags: #LagosFashionWeek #fifaworldcup #grammyawards

Each Hashtag set would consist of three to six different types of Hashtags.

Here’s how to find hashtags for your Instagram.

All you need to do is head over to Instagram and pop in your keywords in the search…

…and Instagram will hand you a Bunch of Hashtags related to what you typed in:

These suggested hashtags are GREAT.

Why?

Because these are Hashtags that people actually use on Instagram. If Instagram Suggests them, they are 100% active.

Now, this is what comes up when you open a Hashtag Page.

The hashtag #ankarafashion has 189k posts, which means it has a fair amount of traffic.

Your Aim of using hashtags is to make your post appear among the Top 9, of each Hashtags.

For smaller accounts, this would be a little bit hard.

For you to have a chance of getting on the Top 9 post, you have to get their Average likes of the Top 9 Posts.

This could be done by summing up the likes on each individual post and then dividing it by 9.

If the average you got, it’s pretty much close to your average likes, then you are good to go.

For example, if the average like of a Hashtag top 9 post is 200 likes,

the average likes you get per post is 500likes, there’s a higher chance, you will easily make the Top 9 post than a page that gets 50likes on the average.

This process could be tedious, as you have to do the same for each individual Hashtags.

Although tools like Flick, Hashtastic, and Ingrammer, they’ve made it easier for you to easily get this data available, just a button click away.

Next, you get your average Daily Post count.

This is needed, in order for you to know how long your post gets to stay at the top of the Hashtags Recent Posts.

Very competitive hashtags that are used thousands of times daily would hardly be able to put your post out there for long, it could be in a matter of or even seconds, and your post is among the top 50 recent posts.

The Daily Average Post Count (DAPC) cannot be easily measured, as some Hashtags contain more than a thousand posts daily.

You can use tools like Flick, Hashtastic, and Ingrammer, to get your results in Minutes.

So you could save yourself the stress of doing the same thing over and over for different hashtags.

The Question is:

How do you find Magical Hashtags?

All you need to do is look for Hashtag with High Total Post counts, and Low Daily average Post Count (less than 200), or Average Likes per Post.

Step #2: Categorize Your Hashtags.

After you’ve searched for your hashtags, you’ve gotten the average no. of likes Per post, and the Daily average Post count.

Then you repeat the same process from Step #1 for different keywords you will like to build hashtags around.

From there, you could come 50-100 different hashtags, so you can easily switch between hashtags whenever you post.

The next thing you want to do is to categorize your Hashtags according to size.

The Hashtags could be grouped into;

• Small Category: Hashtags with less than 50,000 Total Posts.
• Medium Category: Hashtags with more than 50,000 posts and less than 250,000 posts.
• Large Category: Hashtags with more than 250,000 posts and less than 1,000,000 posts.
• Massive Category: Hashtags with more than 1,000,000 posts.

This would make it easy for you to select hashtags for your posts.

You can be doing your Hashtags research and be categorising them immediately.

This makes the job easier.

Categorizing your hashtags is very important as to what I will show you next.

Step #3: Publish High-Quality Content.

Here’s the Truth:

If you want to post to rank on hashtags, you need to keep people on your content.

Every single time You post, Instagram will split test your Content to a Small segment of your followers, and see how they react to it.

If they react more, – by liking, or commenting, Sharing to the story, Saving for Later, – Instagram would then show it to more people,

This is what it tells the Algorithm:

This is Nice Post, People Love It,

Let’s show it to more and more people and it begins to RANK on Hashtags.

There’s no shortcut to this.

Always create HIGH-QUALITY content,

that way your followers react positively to this, and you can easily rank on Hashtags.

I know, creating GOOD content is a lot of work.

Here is what I do,

I spend 1-3 hours every month creating and planning my content for the whole month, that way I could easily post without having to create new contents daily.

Depending on your type of account, you could do the same.

Step #4: Test, Test, Test.

We talked a lot about Hashtag Research and Creating Quality Contents. Which is important.

But for you to get the most out of the Instagram Hashtags,

You need to post different types of content related to your account to know what your audience loves the most,

use different set hashtags (I’d recommend 3 to 5 Sets), and see what works best,

Post at different times to have an insight of when your audience is most ACTIVE.

Know what type of content brings more traffic to your profile and creates more of that.

The testing period could take 5 to 14 days.

I’d recommend your post 2-5 times, during that period.

How would you know what’s working?

By Checking Your Instagram Analytics.

The Analytics option is Only Available for Business and Creator Accounts.

and this one is what it looks like…

Here’s from the activity Tab…

Then you should check your Audience Tab to know about your followers…

From the Analytics, you should try and find a pattern, to follow.

This should give you all details from what type of content you should create more to knowing the BEST time to post your content.

Bonus Step: Use the Hashtag Skyscraper Technique

Instagram allows a maximum of 30 hashtags per post.

How can you get the most out of these 30 Hashtags?

By Using the Hashtag SKYSCRAPER Technique.

What’s the skyscraper technique?

It involves mixing hashtags from categories in your Hashtag Set (of 30).

How do you do this?

Use

• 10 Small Hashtags ( less than 50k posts)
• 10 Medium Hashtags (between 50k to 250k posts)
• 5 large Hashtags. (between 250k post to 1m posts)
• 5 Massive Hashtags. (above 1m posts).

Each of your hashtags set should be structured in this manner.

It could be a Mix of Location hashtags, Branded Hashtags, Community Hashtags and more like that.

You should always try to change your hashtag set on each consecutive posts

Obviously, you don’t want to use spammy Hashtags (eg, #like4like, #followforfollow) as these could hurt your ranking and Engagement.

Here’s what to do Next…

Okay, so I hope this guide helped show you how to get more Reach and Engagement on Posts.

Now, I’d like to hear from you.

What helped you rank your gat more Reach and Engagement on Instagram?

Let me know by leaving a comment below right NOW.