Getting followers on social networking sites has always been one of the main objectives of most brands. The truth is that the most effective and easiest way is investing in advertising because we can exactly target the users that we want to reach. But we have to understand that this technique doesn’t always fit the brand marketing budgets and so we have to find alternatives to getting more followers on Instagram for free. The use of hashtags on Instagram is a very interesting alternative and functionality to increase our followers and get more interactions.
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Before teaching you how to use hashtags strategically, I want to first review with you the most effective and fastest methods to get followers on Instagram.
There are more methods, but these would be essential in any strategy.
I usually refuse to include general hashtags in my content just to get more likes since, in the beginning, there were many bots with fake accounts that automatically followed you and liked or left comments. The reality is that since Instagram launched the functionality of the following hashtags, everything has changed.
Following a hashtag is like following a profile managed by thousands and millions of people. The interesting thing about this functionality is that it allows us, as brands, in the feeds of our clients and potential clients. In a TrackMaven study, they identified that hashtags posts had more interactions than posts without hashtags.
Below, I will show you how to get more out of the hashtags.
The first thing will be to identify the hashtags that you should use. I recommend for you to search for hashtags according to the following 5 categories that I recommend you using, for example, in my book Triunfagram.
With each of these 5 categories, I recommend that you use the 80-20 rule to search for hashtags:
This rule will help you to easily get to the TOP Post of the least used hashtags.
Although the exact formula of the TOP Posts algorithm is unknown, we do know what we have to do to make one of our posts stand out, we need to get hundreds of likes and dozens of comments in a few minutes/hours. For this, we can use general hashtags in our publications, encourage interactions (comments) with our texts, publish in the hours where our audience is more active, take organic traffic and pay other media to promote our posts, etc.
To identify the most important hashtags, the first thing we have to do is make a list of keywords related to our brand and the 5 categories that I mentioned earlier.
Then you’ll need to search for related hashtags. With the iPhone app, you can use the Hashtag Expert for IG (iOS) or the Instagram search engine, we can get related hashtags and this will help us create a better list.
With Focalmark, you can choose a specific category like Business and then a specific location to get related hashtags. With Display Purposes, you can access related hashtags and this can also work from your computer.
Another effective technique is to audit your competitors’ and influential accounts of your niche to see what hashtags they use and see if they fit into your strategy.
You can also go to the hashtags that you’ve already identified and see what other hashtags the users that are highlighted in TOP POSTS use.
You can use the scheme of the 5 categories to organize your hashtags or you can also organize by the type of product or service that you sell or by the type of customer you are targeting.
The idea is to group the hashtags into groups of up to 15-20 hashtags. In each post, you can publish a maximum of 30 hashtags. These groups of hashtags must be put in an accessible place (application of notes in the mobile) or Google Drive if you publish from the computer.
It is NOT advisable to copy and paste the same text with the same hashtags. I recommend replacing words with hashtags and alter the order so that Instagram does not detect SPAM activities.
Once you’ve organized your hashtags, you’ll have to try them in different posts. Remember that for the hashtags to work you will need:
Before using these hashtags, analyze the daily increase in followers you have. Example: 5 new followers per day and average likes and comments in posts. You will need this data to see what increase you get with the hashtags (both followers and likes and comments in publications).
If you want to go the extra mile and increase your community size and visibility, SimplyGram is offering a free trial to achieve exactly that. This best Instagram growth service uses various organic methods to get authentic followers and engagement that you need in order to sell better.
In the first 14 days, you should see a decent increase and development in your Instagram profile. Don’t forget that you must alternate and change your hashtags at least once a month.
Finally, I recommend posting the hashtags as a first comment.
I hope this guide will help you get more out of the hashtags and get more followers and “likes” in your Instagram posts. Don’t forget that the frequency is important so that the actions you do cause a change and generate good results.