So you’ve found the perfect hashtag that increases your social engagement by 100% on every single post and you’re on your way to becoming a highly paid influencer. What next?
Oh wait, no? That’s not you? Okay great, me either. We’re all in the same boat…but if you do actually know Kim K’s secret, feel free to share with this community. We won’t tell!
If you’re doing social media right, your content is going to vary. Not every post will have the same content, so there will never be that one magic hashtag. And if you’re a social media manager, keeping track of these hashtag niches can become a headache! While my profiles focus mostly on social media management, I’m a real person so to best engage with my community my posts range anywhere from social media, technology, skincare, outdoors, travel, and my family. So I’m not going to use the hashtag #MomMomments on my post for this blog about hashtags. But I have plenty of others to choose from in my groups!
I started out old-school and simply kept a list of hashtags in the Notes app on my phone and copied and pasted them into Instagram. That’s a great way to start if you’re new to this and don’t have too many to manage yet. Instagram lets you post up to 30 hashtags in one post. I certainly don’t recommend going all-in like that, but I do think you can reach your main target audience by using about 5-10 per post. I have 4 main hashtag groups that I regularly use that can be adapted to most of my posts. Not to mention, if you frequent the same hashtags, Instagram will start suggesting you follow those hashtags, as well as others to follow you. So it’s a win-win!
I’ve since moved away from the Notes app and now use a couple of scheduling platforms which offer this saved hashtag feature. Not only can you save your hashtags to automatically add into your posts, but some of the platforms even make hashtag suggestions depending on your content. This is a great option if you’re still struggling to find what works for you! Here are the apps that I use:
Planoly : Scheduling for Instagram
Planoly is my dream scheduling app. It speaks to me. It’s pretty and it’s simple. You can drag and drop your photos into the order that you like best in your grid. You can edit your photos, tag people and places, and schedule both your feed and your stories. And of course, you can save your hashtags. Bonus: Planoly also lets you format your captions that actually convert over to Instagram! Want a line break? Press Return. Easy peasy. This was a huge struggle for me before discovering Planoly!
Here’s an example of the view for saving, editing, and adding hashtag groups to your posts.
Tailwind App: Scheduling for Pinterest and Instagram
Tailwind is the magic wand for Pinterest which we’ll talk more about in a later post, but it’s also pretty rad for scheduling Insta posts with hashtags. This app is one of those that offer hashtag suggestions based on your caption content. It also demonstrates the art of hashtagging and suggests how to best follow these rules by color-coding their suggestions:
- Rule 1: #don’t #use #hashtags #on #unimportant #words;
- Rule 2: don’t use hashtags that are highly competitive and have millions of posts if you don’t want yours to get lost in the crowd;
- Rule 3: know what a hashtag means before using it and keep within your niche market.
Here is an example of me using some of my saved hashtags in a Tailwind caption along with the suggested hashtags for my content. I think it’s pretty accurate!
Buffer: Scheduling for Insta, Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook
I’ve had the longest relationship with Buffer. It was the first scheduling app I signed on with, and it will continue to be a favorite for Twitter and LinkedIn. They’ve gone through some changes over the years and it only continues to get better. I’ll just stick with the hashtag features for today, but be on the lookout for a more in-depth post soon. Specifically for Twitter and LinkedIn, you only want to use 1-3 hashtags (less than on Instagram), so we don’t need to bother with saved groups here. Buffer’s hashtag suggestions are quick and easy. Start typing in a hashtagged word and the top ones for that word will immediately start to populate for you to choose from.
The Art of Hashtags
You may be saying to yourself, that’s 3 different apps I’d have to keep track of, why not just use one app? You certainly could! But I find that each of these apps have their own strengths and connect to certain platforms more seamlessly. Plus, having multiple apps with differing options keeps my creativity flowing. I’m afraid that if I were to stick to just one app I’d get more monotone and repetitive in my messaging. But with different options (both visual and operational), I have so much more to choose from, and maybe one app will give me a new idea (or hashtag suggestion) that I hadn’t seen before. Keeping up with the app trends also keeps your content fresh!
If you’re still wondering about hashtags, I enjoyed this article from Buffer titled How to Use Hashtags: How Many, Best Ones, and Where to Use Them. There’s so much info behind hashtags I feel like I could write a whole book on them. But the 3 rules I listed above are the main ideas I’ve been preaching for years on best practices. However, if you only take away one thing from this it’s rule #3: always to check the hashtag before posting! Make your list, then check it twice. As Kevan Lee stated in the Buffer article above, “the worst thing that can happen when using a hashtag is to realize after it’s tweeted that the same hashtag is used for an entirely different topic”.
So now that you know my secret for saving time with hashtag groups, let’s start connecting out there in our posts!
