I know the feeling, you put a ton of time into searching for the perfect hashtags on Instagram, you include them in your post, are excited to see a boost in engagement, and then... nothing happens. It’s incredibly frustrating when you do all the work to complete a hashtag set and then see little or no benefit from it.

When I complete hashtag audits for my clients, I usually find one or more of these three common mistakes. Once you correct these, you will see higher reach from hashtags, which means more eyes on your content!

Using hashtags that are too big

It’s true, if you use zero hashtags in your posts you will see zero benefit. However, I think using hashtags with too many tags is almost the same as using none, especially for small businesses working to build a genuine audience. When searching for new hashtags on Instagram, I recommend sticking with hashtags that have less than 900,000 uses. Anything higher than that and your content will be buried in the hashtag feed within seconds.

Using the same hashtags on every post

Ok, ok, I can see you looking at the clock and thinking, I don’t have time to look up new hashtags for every post. Trust me, I would NEVER suggest this, it’s just not efficient. But if you want to get maximum benefit from your hashtags you can’t just set it and forget it. I recommend curating two or three separate hashtag sets (you can have up to 30 on any Instagram post) and putting them on rotation. Having several sets will show you if some are doing better than others, allowing you to narrow down the hashtags that are working the best for your content.

Not checking your Instagram Insights regularly

If you are using Instagram for business one of the best habits you can get into is checking your data on a weekly basis. Did you know that you can see specifically how many impressions your content had from hashtags? Scroll down on the Insights screen of each of your posts to see the breakdown of impressions “From Hashtags”. Watching these numbers regularly will give you the information you need to adjust hashtag sets as needed. I like to aim for 50%, or more, impressions from hashtags on each post.

I think hashtags are an under utilized marketing tool for small businesses, but can make a big difference in building a genuine audience. Having a hashtag strategy and method to review regularly will get more eyes on your content.

Keep your eyes on my website for more blogs coming soon about where I find hashtags and the ideal hashtag set.