ARE INSTAGRAM HASHTAGS DEAD IN 2024? | Are Hashtags Still Relevant? What is the best strategy?

hashtags on instagram have changed and evolved so much in the past few years which means the hashtag strategy you're currently using is probably outdated if you're looking for a brand spanking new strategy for 2022 you've come to the right place because in this video i'll be answering frequently asked questions like are hashtags dead do we even need to use them moving forward and even the practical how many hashtags should you use when you post should you put them in the captions or the comments all of that will be answered in today's video what's up friends

i'm milly i'm an influencer coach and welcome back to basically my netflix show where you get weekly videos from me every wednesday teaching you the latest strategies for how to grow your brand business and social media as an aspiring influencer and every sunday where i take you behind the scenes of what it's like to actually run a business as a youtuber and influencer myself as always timestamps and resources will be in the description down below because i value your time and you already know where you're here so let's get into it okay so i feel

like for you to really understand how outdated your strategy might be we need to go back in time a little bit i did some digging on google to find some of the most popular hashtag articles in 2016 to see what was being taught back in the day and came across this article hashtags are essentially a way to tag your photo and throw into a chronological pool of other photos and videos that have used the same tag this allows other users to find photos of similar interests or in the same niche for example if you're a

photographer and want to find other portrait photographers or photos then the portrait hashtag should have photos of portraits that other users have tagged with their images so this is important to remember hashtags were originally created for photographers to find other content photographers get photo inspiration and make connections and it worked for exactly that back then but then cue the influencers businesses and entrepreneurs into the chat that strategy slowly but surely stopped working leading us to today or more recently april of 2022 head of instagram adam asari went to his stories to answer the question do

hashtags help views this is what he said not really they do help us to understand what a post is about which means it might be more likely to show up in a place like a hashtag page for instance but in general no i wouldn't try to think of hashtags as a way to get more distribution basically he says not really he wouldn't try to use hashtags as a strategy or way to get more distribution we were taught through the ultimate game of telephone that the right hashtags or combination of hashtags will expose your brand to

large and targeted audiences which is just not how it works anymore there's a new sheriff in town y'all and the laws are different so to answer the question are hashtags dead the answer no but the way we've been using them is dead now maybe you're wondering if hashtags don't help with getting more views then why use hashtags at all well really you don't have to use hashtags at all if you're not aware instagram has started to expand into more seo practices this means they're making their platform a little bit more search friendly similar to youtube

and tick tock where you can look up a key phrase on their search and explore pages and any post using those keywords or key phrases will appear in results i'm a huge fan of utilizing seo strategies on your instagram because that's what i teach and i have seen students who have seen tremendous results utilizing seo alone so if you're interested in adapting seo into your instagram strategy i do have a full video here i know the term seo is a little bit scary but don't worry i break it down really digestible into actionable steps that

you could take today so you don't have to use hashtags but they do still work in the way that they say they do nowadays hashtags are a tool that you can use to categorize your content to the algorithm why do you want to categorize your content this is one of the way instagram is able to better connect users with what they're looking for remember adversary didn't say hashtags are pointless never use them no he said they do help us understand what a post is about which means it might be more likely to show up in

places like hashtag page okay i kind of feel like i'm explaining things but i want to break it down how hashtags work you have this post you use hashtags and it doesn't perform well maybe it gets poor engagement maybe zero reach so you're like okay let me try it again new post you use hashtags and this time it does perform well or the engagement is higher the reach goes up most people's immediate thoughts here are oh i used the right hashtags this time that's why my post performed well when in reality it's because my content

was performing well on its own then instagram started to suggest it and push it to places like the hashtag page your content didn't get improved reach because of the hashtags you used what caused the post to perform well in those hashtags was the fact that that content was great content so if your goal is to rank higher in feed explore or search results your goal should be to create quality content i mean this goes back to instagram growth 101 literally an instagram help desk when you look up how to grow on instagram their literal answer

is to create quality content that people want to see in their feed and then if you do that then it's more likely that you'll be pushed to places like search and explore quick shameless plug if your goal is instagram growth i have a free downloadable that teaches you the five steps i took to get 10 000 followers in 30 days on instagram so yeah if you like free goodness that's for you so we've talked about multiple sources of adam asari instagram help desk and if that's not enough proof for you remember the post that instagram

creator account posted on september 27 2001 talking about the hashtag best practices remember that post we've talked about it here on my channel they talk about the do's and don'ts and the last slide says things to keep in mind about hashtags are the content itself and the way people interact with it can affect distribution more than hashtags and think of hashtags as a tool that provides context about your post and supports delivering content to people who are interested in a particular topic okay so what should your hashtag strategy be step one i want to challenge

you to think less about hashtags spend less time on hashtag research and more time on creating the best possible content for your followers when you feel like your content is like thebomb.com then you can start implementing the next steps step 2 find and use relevant hashtags we've heard a few times already that your hashtags should be relevant and they should describe the content that you're posting when i'm thinking of hashtags to use i like to use hashtags to describe the three things in the photo or the three things about the post so one hashtags can

describe the photo itself or the video itself two the content that you're sharing in that post and three your page or your niche for example if i post this photo here and i'm going to use relevant hashtags that describe the photo the content and myself my niche my industry i'm going to use hashtags like palm springs because i'm in palm springs in this photo hashtag travel influencer right because i'm traveling i'm an influencer these are things that are describing the photo hashtag vibes it's a little a little broad but still it's describing the photo hashtag

palm trees hashtag girl in bathing suit no i'm just kidding don't that's probably not a good hashtag to use anyway so i'm describing the visual of this photo first also the context or the content in this photo if you read the caption i'm giving tips about instagram so i'm also going to do instagram tips caption writing writing 101 i'm giving tips about how to write captions or whatever this caption is about i'm going to use hashtags that describe what this caption is teaching and then finally my industry my niche my my title i'm an influencer

coach instagram coach so i'm going to use hashtag instagram coach hashtag influencer coach hashtag business coach in my industry we teach a lot of mindset inspiration business tips so maybe hashtag business101 business inspiration so basically your strategy with your hashtags is to be as descriptive as possible for the photo or video that the content that you are talking about and the industry that you're in sometimes coming up with hashtags on your own can be a little intimidating or overwhelming or maybe you just don't feel like you're that good at it so if you're looking for

a tool to help you find the best hashtags that you could use so that you have more likelihood to rank in specific hashtags i use a platform called slayer app no not sponsored i feel like i shouldn't have to say whether like take me seriously because it's not sponsored like anytime i recommend something here it's because i believe in it sponsored or not okay i'm honestly just a really big fan of hashtag slayer app one their instagram page is filled with hashtag and instagram tips up the wazoo so i love another company that gives and

teaches generously and two i've been using them for over a year now i pay for them myself out of pocket and i i just absolutely love the platform with hashtag slayer not only do they help you create your own collection of hashtags but you could also analyze competitors and see what hashtags they're using plus with the list of hashtags that they spit out for you in your industry it'll tell you how likely your profile is to rank using a specific hashtag so it's like hey if you create great content and you use this hashtag this

is your likelihood of ranking higher so if you want to try hashtag slayer for seven days for free i do have a link below as a member or as a user and if you end up loving it as much as me you just want to sign up you could use the code milli50 off one for 50 off so i'll put the link and my code down in the description so step number one stop thinking about hashtag so much step number two use relevant and descriptive hashtags and step number three figure out how many hashtags you

should use i feel like that's a common question how many hashtags should you use there's a whole things about instagram said in this post to use three to five hashtags but agree to disagree everyone's instagram strategy is going to look different so it's important to test and see what works best for you maybe three to five hashtags work really well for me but for you that sweet spot is 11 hashtags 13 hashtags or maybe you could do 30 really great specific relevant niched hashtags and you're like these 30 are so perfect for this post if

you could do all 30 try all 30. to give you some more answers the team at social insider recently analyzed over 75 million instagram posts published between march 2021 and march 2022 to see what the data said about the relationship between instagram hashtags and post views as you can see here the research shows that the number of hashtags an instagram post has does not influence post distribution you do see that the highest average engagement rate by impressions at 3.41 is generated by posts with three to four hashtags so i could see why instagram would suggest

using three to five but that doesn't mean using 30 hashtags doesn't work i think from looking back to where hashtags originated on instagram they probably just want their users to focus on fewer quality hashtags so that search results can become more and more relevant and accurate moving forward because if everybody was using love on every post search would get really messy really fast like actually it already is that's why we have banned hashtags banned hashtags are hashtags that people have spammed just too much if you don't know what band hashtags are i do have a

whole other video about hashtag strategy right here i explain it there don't want to get into it here just don't use band hashtags check it out i believe their strategy by telling people to use three to five hashtags kind of puts that pressure on users to be like oh oh no i can only use three to five hashtags i better make sure those three to five are really good and now people are finally starting to get more specific and strategic with their hashtags instead of just spamming a bunch of search results know what i mean

step number four put the hashtags in the caption not the comments if you didn't know this already now you do this is one of the tips instagram gave themselves in their best practices post and while we're talking about it i might as well just go through all of these do use hashtags that are relevant to your content no surprise there do check which hashtags your fans already use and follow this is another little secret tip if you're trying to do brand collaborations go to the brand's profile that you want to collab with check to see

who they're following not who they're following but brands follow specific hashtags and if you want to get in front of their eyes use those hashtags just just a little tip do mix well known and niche hashtags to expand your discoverability again this helps with categorizing your content so maybe the hashtag influencer has millions of posts well your goal isn't to get discovered in that category your goal is just to categorize your post so maybe you will use hashtag influencer if that is a great explanation or descriptor word of that post do use specific hashtags so

that your fans can easily search for your content you can even make your own hashtags and do use three to five hashtags we saw that we talked about it let's talk about the don'ts this is a given but don't use hashtags that have nothing to do with your content just don't it doesn't help instagram categorize you it's gonna get pushed to the wrong people they won't engage with it because it has nothing to do with your content which means the reach will just suck don't use overly generic hashtags this will make it harder for people

to discover you if a hashtag is overly used or overpopulated and don't use too many hashtags they say using 10 to 20 hashtags will not make you more likely to be discovered which is true just because you have 30 hashtags that doesn't mean you're guaranteed or entitled to get more reach you're not entitled to anything you're not guaranteed to get reach hashtags are simply a tool to help you become discoverable if you're using them correctly and if you have great content so using more hashtags doesn't guarantee more reach just like using three hashtags doesn't mean

your reach is gonna suck it's all about the quality of your content and the quality of your hashtags which i think i've said a million times in this video i'm so sorry if you've made it this far be sure to comment the phrase hole hole that's what my shirt says funny story not gonna tell you you're not here for funny stories but if you made it this far comment the phrase whole when commenting down below and if you're not already subscribed make sure to hug that subscribe button and turn on the bell notifications so you

don't miss when i post my next video thanks so much for watching everyone i will see you in the next one follow your joy bye [Music]