Do you regularly publish posts on hype topics on Instagram, determine the time when your audience is online and looks at your page, and new subscribers still don’t come? No likes from third-party accounts, falling coverage and traffic? What to do? There is an exit! These are tags or hashtags.

It is thanks to them that you will attract more people to your account, get new subscribers and likes. But first things first. Let's first figure out what it is and how to use tags correctly.

Instagram tags: what they are and how to use them

A hashtag (tag) is a link within any social network (a word preceded by a # sign). They can be one word or several.

Important! If the hashtag consists of several words, then they must be written without spaces. For example, #promotioninstagram.
All tags are conventionally divided into 3 categories:

High frequency. From 100,000 publications.

Medium frequency. From 50,000 publications.

Low frequency. Less than 50,000 publications.

To use tags, you just need to add them to the description of the photo when you publish a new post. Keywords can be specified in different languages. They should be relevant to the topic of the post. But the most profitable is to create your own personal tag (if you are a famous blogger) or choose the ones that are most popular. By your personal tag, it will be very easy for readers to find you, and by popular ones, potential followers will come to the page.

On this social network, you can leave a maximum of 30 hashtags for likes under one post. The rest # will not work, but will simply merge into plain text.

Important! You cannot copy the same tags under each post, as Instagram will regard this as spam, and after your post will not be shown to users.

In addition, the Hashtag Subscription feature has recently appeared, which means that if your tags are not relevant to the photos, then users can complain about the post. After that, your post may disappear from the lists by tags, and subsequent photos with keywords will be underestimated in reach.

Tags can be filled not only in the body of the post, but also in the comments. The main thing is that the comment must be from the account owner. The only reason you shouldn't use hashtags in the comments is because they won't be able to track statistics - how many people came to your page through tags.

It is also worth considering the posting time of the post and hashtags. If the latter are added later than a day after the post, then it will not be included in the top. And accordingly, this will all affect the set of likes and the number of new subscribers.

Hashtags can also be used in stories (you can read more about stories - what they are, why they are needed, how to publish them correctly - you can read here). Story tags work on the same principle as in an account: a person goes to the feed with other posts where the selected hashtag was used.

What you need to use hashtags for

Using tags solves several problems at once:

• Sort photos by headings and topics. Tags were originally conceived to identify post topics. That is, if you wanted to find photos with nature, then clicking on #nature, you would find all the photos. Thus, tags still work, especially in the accounts of people who have personal blogs. But here it is important to come up with your own individual hashtags: this will make it easier to find your publications.

• Help to organize and conduct a competition. The same system works here as in the first paragraph. According to hashtags, the organizers giveaway, SFS (in decryption and translation into Russian it means “mention for mention.” That is, famous bloggers do something in the form of a competition: you have to publish their photo in your profile with a mark, and then they will look at everyone participants, choose the ones they like and promote in their blog), various contests can find participants among a million Instagram users and determine the winners. Without such interaction, holding such events on this social network would have been impossible.

• Attract people to your account. With the right hashtags, you can increase the reach of users who view your profile. Through the tags, you will be found by new people who will subscribe to your account and like it.

• They help to find clients. Very often this rule applies to beauty salons and businesses that provide services to clients. For example, if you run a cheese restaurant, then just indicate #cheese restaurantDnipro, or instead of the city, put the exact address (district, metro station). Then customers will be able to look for a service in the place where they are closer.

Working with hashtags
If you have taken up the active maintenance of your Instagram page, then it is important for you to know some unspoken rules about the correct spelling of tags:

1. Don't borrow other people's personal hashtags.
2. The c # and @ keywords are completely different tags. By using @ you will mention the user, and # will put a hashtag under the photo.
3. Use only those tags that fit the subject of your post.
4. Don't write a whole phrase from hashtags. For example, # the world # should # know # what # I # eat. It looks ugly and unaesthetic.
5. Use popular keywords, but remember that for them your post disappears from the search results more quickly.
6. Add 5 to 30 tags per post.
7. Hashtags contain only letters, numbers or symbols. Hyphens, dashes and spaces are not included.

How to get to the top by hashtags
Entering the TOP posts by tags brings more followers and likes. As I mentioned earlier, all keywords (hashtags) fall into three categories. Depending on your account (that is, its size: number of publications, subscribers), choose a specific tag. The most important factor in getting into the TOP is the productivity of subscribers (that is, the speed of gaining likes, reposts, saves and comments). So what you need to do:

1. Choose the tag that you like and which you want to place under the photo to get to the TOP.

2. Analyze the keyword. If you have used it before - see how many likes on these posts and when the posts were made.

3. If you understand that more people have come to your account using other tags of this topic, and have left more likes, then you should choose a less popular keyword.

4. Determine the time when your target audience (target audience) is online. Subscriber activity time is very important, as it also affects the speed and number of likes.

5. Make a post with a tag.

Life hack! Another way to reach the TOP by tag: all stories with a hashtag are displayed in the search results. As a rule, the competition in Stories is much lower than in the feed. So try to get into the selection of stories.

Does Instagram tag promotion work?
Previously - as soon as this social network appeared - it was easy to promote your account by hashtags: as they published fewer high-quality and attractive photos. Now this method is outdated.

Users most often now search for publications through the "Recommendations" section. It is difficult to get there, as it does not depend on the number of likes, comments, reposts, subscribers. If you want to know how to get to the "Recommendations" section, leave a comment under this article, and I will write a separate post about it.

How to find hashtags for Instagram
If you can't come up with your own personal tag, then two ways to find keywords for posts will help you:

1. Instagram recommendations when searching.

Just start typing in the search engine any word for which you want to find a video or photo, and the social network will offer you options itself.

2. Applications for the selection of tags.

There are endless numbers of them now: you can install services on Android, IOS or use them online on your computer. Among the most popular are Focalmark, Hootsuite, Buffer, instatag.ru. They are all free. But from the first three, you can also buy paid extended versions: they will provide you with a metric for your Instagram account.
Do you use hashtags under your photos? How do you pick them up? Do tags help in promotion? Do you use buying followers on Instagram? Share in the comments!