Hashtags
Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of business foundations for mums. In the last episode that I did, which was just myself talking without an interview, I talked about Instagram and I touched on some of the basics of Instagram. But one of the other features of Instagram that is really, really important to talk about is hashtags. And I really did think it deserved an episode, all of it’s own, so hashtags.
Let’s get started. What are hashtags? A hashtag is the hash symbol, which is followed by whatever you want your hashtag to be about. And hashtags are made up of a word, or a phrase that you want to tag, with no spaces anywhere. So for example, I might want to do a hashtag which is mums in business. So in this instance, you would type hashtag mums in business with no spaces anywhere, no space immediately after the hashtag and no spaces between the words no underscores no punctuation. You can use numbers and also you can use emojis in hashtags, but in reality, I think the most effective ones and the ones that have the best following, are the ones that are purely the word or the phrase themselves.
So hashtags, why do we use hashtags? Why do we need them on Instagram? Hashtags are a way for users to find you. So as an example, you could create a wonderful post about something that you really want people to know about. And you post it on your feed. And the only people who are going to see that before you’ve added any hashtags, are the people who already follow you and follow your, and even then not all of them will be shown the post, but it will only go to people who follow you. And that’s all well and good if you have a personal account and you’re just sharing with friends and family, for example, or your account is private and you’re sharing family photos with people who you just want to see it. However, when you have a business. It’s really, really important that you don’t have a private post, for a start, if you want other people to see your posts. And it’s really important to help people to come across your account.
So the very first way that people could come across your account, but it is a really small way that people are likely to come across your account is that maybe your name will appear when somebody does a search, your account might appear. So that’s why having a handle or name on your account, and we talked a little bit in the previous episode that I did about the difference between your username or your handle and the name that you have on there. However, a great example is Stacey at Meet the Moon, who I will be interviewing in my next episode, and Stacey has her her handle which is at Meet the Moon designs and her name is Stacy – papercut artist. So if people are searching for papercut, paper cutting, things like that they’re likely to come across her account in their search straightaway, which is really, really useful. So people might come across you via your name via your handle, but it’s not going to reach a lot of people and they have to be really specific about typing in the search that happens to be your name or your handle.
So when you’re in business, particularly when you’re starting out or when you’re growing your reach. You don’t have that many followers and you need to get your message out there and you need to get people following you. You need to find new followers. So hashtags are the way that we get that message out there and get your posts out to a wider audience. I find it easier to turn this around and look at it from the point of view of somebody who might want to follow you. So let’s look at it from the point of view of a potential customer who you are trying to reach. The first thing that you need to do is to really know and understand who your ideal customer is. Who do you want to get in front of? Now again, that is an episode all of its own, finding your avatar and your perfect ideal client. And that’s something we will go over at some point. But just for now, just think about who your ideal client is. What are they interested in? That’s a really, really key thing. What are they likely to be searching for?
So hashtags are a way that people can search on Instagram for content that interests them. So if you go on your Instagram account to the search feature, you go to the little magnifying glass that’s on your Instagram account and you type in something that you want to search for, in the top. The first thing that comes up as you’re typing, you will see accounts that seem to be relevant to what you’re typing. And once you click on the little blue link at the bottom that says see all results, or you click on the search button on your keypad, you will see a list of the top search results that Instagram thinks that you might be interested in, given the search that you’ve put in. So once you have done that you can then see along the top are a list of options. You can look at accounts that relate to your search, but you can also look at tags.
So I’m going to use mum life as an example tag. It’s really really popular hashtag so maybe you could try searching along with me while I type that one in. So to use that one as an example if you type mum life into the search bar, either the two words mum and life all as one word with no spaces in between. And once you’ve typed it, you click on that little blue link that says see all results. And initially you’ll just get shown accounts that seem to be relevant to your search. Once you’ve clicked on that blue link, it will bring up a list along the top of your screen with different types of things that you can search for. And one of those is tags. So if you click on that, it will take you to a list of all the tags that start with mum life. So at the time of recording there are 13.9 million posts that have the hashtag mum life so that’s obviously a really popular one. And then if I look down the list, it suggests other things that I might be interested in that also start with mum life, other hashtags so for example, mum life UK that has 279,000 posts at the moment that use the hashtag mum life UK. Mum lifestyle, Mum life is the best life, mum life quotes, mum Life Rocks and so on. So as you go down the list, you can search for different things that you might be interested in. Based on what you’ve typed into the search bar.
So people not only search by hashtag, but they also follow hashtags. So if there is a hashtag that somebody is particularly interested in, once they’ve clicked on it, they can then follow that hashtag and a lot of people follow a particular hashtag because they know that they’re likely to see content and posts from that hashtag that will interest them. So if you put a post up that has that hashtag in there, then there’s a good possibility that you will appear in their feed.
So let’s have a bit more of a detailed look at the hashtag that we’re looking at, hashtag mum life. So click on the hashtag itself in the list and you will see first of all the top posts within that hashtag. And these are the posts that are getting the best reactions. These are the posts that are getting the most engagement. If you move across to the next category, you’ve got recent posts as well. And then the third option is reels, which is another option to look at. So we’re just going to look at posts to start with and you will see that these posts are in chronological order with the most recently posted post at the top, okay. With something that has a huge number such as mum life, you know in the millions or in the hundreds of 1000s, then that post is going to disappear really quickly. The feed will refresh really quickly. So just try pulling down your feed to refresh it and see how quickly the posts refresh. So something such as hashtag mum life has a huge, huge number of posts on it. And that means it’s really interesting to look at the posts at the top line and to see how quickly they disappear as you keep dragging your grip down and just refreshing and refreshing how quickly those posts disappear. So when you’re thinking about what hashtags to include in your posts, bear in mind that although you will get a huge amount of reach by using that hashtag, that reach will be very, very short lived in terms of time because there are so many posts constantly appearing on that hashtag, that your posts will have disappeared down the feed within minutes, if not seconds, and equally your posts is not necessarily going to be shown to that many people using the hashtag unless Instagram feels that you relate on other levels and you have multiple hashtags that that person might be interested in.
But with all of those different options of posts that they could share in people’s feeds, what are the chances it’s going to be yours. So it can be really, really useful to have some hashtags that you do use that have a huge following, but it’s also really useful to have some hashtags that have a much smaller following that you use as well, that are much more specific and relevant to what you do. So if you happen to find one that really says what you do or really talks to the market that you serve, that can be really good because you may get less people who see that post and it may be out there and available to less people, because there’s less people viewing that hashtag, but the people who do see it are much, much more likely to be engaged with what you do and interested in what you do, because it’s much more specific and relevant to them. And you have much more chance of converting to sales from a small but really engaged audience who are really interested in what you do, then a very broad range of people who might be vaguely interested in what you do. So this is where it can be useful to make your hashtags a bit more specific, or even really specific.
So again, we’ll use the same example, mum life, so if I use mum life, it might get lots and lots and lots of mums looking at my post, but I specifically aim to work with mums in the UK. So immediately I can choose to be more specific, just straightaway there. You can break it down and be more specific to what you do. The more specific you make it the smaller your audience is likely to become. But also the more relevant your content is going to be to them. So for example, I might use hashtag mum life UK rather than hashtag mum life because I know that that audience is much more relevant.
So it can be really useful to have a really good mix of the broader and the more specific hashtags. I use both of those hashtags in my posts, I use hashtag mum life and hashtag mum life UK. Also think about the different ways that you could use the same words in hashtags. So multiples and plurals. So for example, somebody who I work with, who I help create content for, we use the hashtag yoga class, but we also use yoga classes. Or turn words around so when I use a lot is business mums but also mums in business. So research different combinations of words, look at the hashtags, research what following they have, research what the content is like, research how relevant it is to you. Hashtags that are specific to your geographic area can also be really useful, if your business is specific to a geographic area. So for example, if I happened to be doing a face to face half day training programme, and I wanted to engage people to come on my programme, I’m based in Buckinghamshire, so I might use hashtag Buckinghamshire business, hashtag Buckinghamshire mums to try and engage the geographic demographic of who I’m trying to reach. But if I’m looking at a wider audience, and my services are relevant to the whole of the UK, I probably wouldn’t be more specific like that.
You can also use much more widely used and generic hashtags. So this you can have some real fun with these. So days of the week hashtags, season hashtags can be really useful, but only if you think it’s likely to get you in front of the audience that you want to see. So for example, things like Motivation Monday, I mean, you can research the day of the week hashtags, and there’s so many fun options that come up, but if you want to put a motivational post up every Monday, Motivation Monday can be a great way to go and it gets you in front of a really wide audience. Weekend Vibes is one that I see a lot people, posting what they’re doing on the weekend. Again, it’s really generic. It’s not going to get you in front of a specific audience, but it’s something that might get you in front of a much broader audience.
And with hashtags, you can use up to 30 hashtags on your post. Now, again, the algorithm that’s a whole different conversation that we’ll have another time. But there’s a real mixture of opinions as to how many hashtags are the best number of hashtags to use. So there are plenty of people who say that you should use all 30 And I’ve also heard quite recently, a lot of people saying that you shouldn’t use more than five, and I know HubSpot is one of the main places which creates content around how to use Instagram effectively. It’s a really big international platform, and a recent video I watched from them suggested you shouldn’t use more than 11 hashtags, or 11 is the optimal amount. So it really is in reality worth trying it out and seeing what works best for you. Seeing what number of hashtags gets the most engagement.
So many people offer different advice, and who knows the reality of it, try it and see for yourself. The other debate which I come across quite a lot is whether to put hashtags in the body of your text, or whether to put hashtags in the first comment. And again, there’s no right answer. Some people argue vehemently on both sides. And actually a lot of people say it doesn’t matter. So you can do either. But if you’re scheduling, then unless you’re using the more advanced Page Tools, then you would need to include the hashtags in the body of the text. Because if you’re going to use it in the comment, you need to do it immediately after and you need to have all ready to go to copy and paste straight into a comment as soon as you’ve posted that particular post. As I say if you’re using the more advanced paid platforms for scheduling, some of those allow you to put a comment immediately after the post.
So hashtags effectively are a way to get your message out in front of other people. So it’s a way that your posts will be put in front of people who follow those hashtags. Obviously, it won’t get put in front of all of the people that follow that hashtag because mum life as we talked about, if you keep refreshing this new posts coming up every few seconds, and you would need to be on Instagram all day viewing constantly 24/7 to see all of the hashtags as they came up. So obviously it won’t get in front of everybody who views those hashtags, but it might get in front of some of them and you’ll be able to see lots of different posts if you go on to those hashtags that might be relevant to you as well. So we haven’t talked about stories, again, we haven’t talked about reels and how they interact with hashtags. But again, their subjects of their own and neither of those are areas that I’m particularly specialist in, or particularly comfortable doing, or confident in doing. So I’m definitely going to bring in somebody else who specialises in those to talk in some future interviews, I’ve got a couple of people lined up already to talk about those things. But what you can do is use hashtags in your stories. You can use hashtags in your reels, you can hide hashtags behind your gifs, you can hide behind your images, you can fade them into the background, and you can put them in the comments as well. So in stories, you can’t necessarily see them but they might potentially appear in people’s stories, if those people follow that hashtag. So again, that can be a really great way to get your stories in front of people.
Some really important things to bear in mind with hashtags, reasons why it is absolutely essential that you do your hashtag research. And the first thing is banned hashtags. And hashtags are where a hashtag has been used for loads of spam or inappropriate content. So it’s really really important before you put any post out, to do a search on the hashtags that you’re using, and check that they are not banned hashtags. So there are various tools and websites that you can use to search for banned hashtags. And if you Google Search banned hashtags, you’ll find various articles that come up, which tell you what the currently banned hashtags are, that are updated on a regular basis. But there’s a really useful site that I use, which is called IQ Hashtags. And that tells you if the hashtag is in use at the moment or not. It does say on its search page, that you’re searching for banned hashtags, but one thing I have noticed with it, is that you could put a really obscure hashtag in there and it comes up as banned. And actually when you look it up, you find it’s not that it’s banned. It’s just that it’s never been used. So IQ Hashtags will actually search and tell you if hashtag is currently in use or not.
So once you do find any banned hashtags, using tools such as that, you can then go and research them yourselves and you can find out whether they are banned, whether they’re just not particularly well used or not used at all. So when you’re searching for banned hashtags in Instagram itself or searching for hashtags in Instagram itself, sometimes you’ll put in a specific term and it might not appear near the top of the list. And if it doesn’t come up at the top or near the top, that’s a pretty good indication or pretty good suggestion that it could well be banned. The other thing to look out for is when you click on that hashtag, and you’ll see a message at the top which says recent posts for hashtag, whatever you’ve typed, are hidden because some posts may not follow community guidelines.
I can give you some examples of hashtags that you might not even consider would be a banned hashtag. I mean, how could people post inappropriately on some of these hashtags, but when you look them up, you find that they are and that’s because particularly for example, hashtags that are related to a specific time of year often get used a lot, for lots and lots of spam being posted on those hashtags. So for example, Valentine’s Day, is a banned hashtag at the moment. It was banned a few days before Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t two weeks before Valentine’s Day, it was still readily available when we were looking at scheduling posts at that point, but come closer to Valentine’s Day and people started really spamming that hashtag, and therefore it gets reported to Instagram as being spam. And the more it gets reported, the more likely it is to get banned. So Valentine’s Day is currently a band hashtag. Happy New Year is often a band hashtag around New Year time and has been a band hashtag for the last couple of years around that time of year.
Another one that might be quite surprising, beauty blogger, is a band hashtag if you’re a beauty blogger, you might find that your posts won’t get out there because beauty blogger that is a banned hashtag. However, beauty bloggers plural is not, so a lot of posts were getting reported again for spam. Another one that again, you might not think particularly as being inappropriate, the word ice, using the word ice. I used to work in addiction counselling. And as such, I know that ice is a term that was often used to refer to a particular kind of drug. So there was obviously a lot of inappropriate content being used on the hashtag ice, but you click on the hashtag ice and you look at the content that’s on there. And there’s some beautiful icy pictures on there. But it does then say recent content has been blocked because there was a mixture of really beautiful ice photographs, but also really inappropriate posts as well.
So it’s about looking at your hashtags and checking because you may often not be aware of the context of something that is being used on there using a hashtag that you might otherwise use. Actually a really interesting one as well. One of my clients is a reflexologist and we found that the word feet is banned as well and a number of other foot related hashtags were banned. So we have to be really careful when we’re looking at her content to make sure that none of the hashtags that we’re using to do with feet, have been banned. Now what will happen if you include a banned hashtag in your post. What’s going to happen is that your post will not appear in anyone’s feed. That’s it. So you could use all 30 hashtags, and just one of them is banned, and it won’t appear in any of those feeds and it won’t appear on anyone’s feeds, because of that one banned hashtag in there. The other thing to bear in mind is Shadow bans. So shadow bands is not an official term. But a shadow ban is when you use the same banned hashtag multiple times, if you consistently use a banned hashtag, and again, if you’re not looking up or aware of the fact that a hashtag that you do use has been banned, you might consistently carry on using it completely oblivious to the fact that it’s a banned hashtag. And as a result of using that banned hashtag many times, you can end up with a shadow ban.
Shadow bans can also happen if you use the same combination of hashtags multiple times and when I say the same combination, you can use the same 10 hashtags for example and then mix up the other 20 or you can use the same 20 and mix up the other 10, that are depending on the specifics of your post and that’s absolutely fine. But if you consistently use exactly the same combination of hashtags over and over again multiple times, Instagram looks at that and thinks that you’re not being very creative. You’re not being very engaging. You’re just copying and pasting. And that’s where Instagram decides to shadow ban you. So you can get a shadow ban, as I say either from using the consistently same combination of hashtags or from using a banned hashtag consistently.
And what is a shadow ban? A shadow ban means that no posts in your profile will get seen in your feed in other people’s feeds. They will not get seen in hashtag feeds at all. So nothing. So you could consistently post 10 posts for example with exactly the same combination or with a banned hashtag and it will be a shadow ban and then for a period of time after that none of your content will be shown in people’s feeds and none of it will be shown in the hashtag feeds. The only place that people can come to find your content is if they actively come to your profile itself. And they can then scroll through your profile and see your content on there. But it won’t be shared out in a broader reach.
So it’s really really important to have a look at the context of what you’re posting, the context of your hashtags and making sure that the content is appropriate for what you want to be talking about.
Something else to consider with hashtags is about using content not just about what you do, but also think about using hashtags that your ideal client potentially might be searching for. So for example, I’m a virtual assistant and if I was to put virtual assistants, and virtual assistants in the area I live in, and virtual assistant social media, and social media content scheduling, and bookkeeping and all those kinds of things into my posts that tells people what I do. But it doesn’t necessarily reach out to new people. Now if somebody is looking for a virtual assistant to do their social media content scheduling, then they potentially might find me using those hashtags. But what about those people who aren’t necessarily looking for me, they don’t necessarily know that I’m there. I’ve got a service that will be really valuable to them, but they don’t necessarily realise that. So I’d still like to get my message in front of them.
So going back to business foundations for mums, as an example, the aim of business foundations for mums is to get in front of mums who want to start a business, or who are thinking about starting a business, or maybe have just started a business and they’re not really sure about where to go. So the chances are they probably are not looking for me yet. They maybe don’t even know that I exist, or that an account that does the kind of thing that I do exists. Particularly for example, those mums who maybe are dreaming about starting a business, but haven’t actually done anything about it yet. They’re not likely to be searching for hashtags about it just yet. It’s still in the back of their mind. It’s still hiding in there somewhere.
So actually, I want to get hashtags and find hashtags that really talk to those clients. I want to find something that might get me in front of them, even though they don’t know I exist. So you really need to understand your ideal client and what they are looking for and what kind of hashtags they are likely to be looking at. So think about the things that they might be interested in the things that they’re likely to look at. So again, business foundations for mums, people potentially won’t come looking for me so I’m going to call out to mums, to mums in business.
So the benefits of hashtags and getting people to find your posts that have your hashtags in, means that somebody might see a post they might be inspired by what they see. Then from there they will come to, potentially to my account, to my feed they will see what kind of content I have. And if they’re interested, then they may start following me and that then gives me an opportunity to then start sharing further content to share content that they will then see again in their feed.
So that’s why for example, I use the hashtag that we’ve been talking about, hashtag mum life and hashtag mum life UK because they’re the kind of hashtags that call out to my target market, even though they don’t necessarily specifically say what I do. So those are the kind of hashtags that are likely to get me in front of a new audience. And that is the main point of a hashtag and what they do.
I hope that you found some of this useful and it’s given you some things to think about hashtags is an absolute minefield, we could probably talk about it for an entire half a day. There’s so much more that I could have said in this episode. However, I’m going to leave that with you now. And I’m sure if there’s more that you’re interested in, we can look further at it another time. Or you can go away and research some more information about hashtags for yourself. Have a wonderful day.