If you’re searching for some great Instagram hashtag hacks to get more followers and boost your engagement, you’ve come to the right place!
From hiding hashtags in your post’s first comment and Instagram Stories to picking your profile’s top-performing hashtags, we’ve got a hack for you.
Ready to get started? Here are 12 Instagram hashtag hacks and tricks you don’t want to miss:
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #1: Add Line Breaks Before Your Hashtags
You can pour a lot of love and energy into writing great Instagram captions, but isn’t it annoying when Instagram removes the line breaks from your text?
Lucky for you, we have an easy Instagram hashtag hack for this: use the Later app to write your captions!
Adding line breaks with Later couldn’t be easier. All you have to do is press the return key while writing your caption and you’ll have lovely, spaced out captions for your Instagram posts!
If you’re posting a caption with 30 hashtags, this is also a great way to keep your caption from looking cluttered and messy.
Just add a few returns (even just 1 or 2 line breaks like @brandtryouts makes a positive impact!) to move your hashtags to the bottom of your caption.
When you post your photo, Instagram will only reveal the first few lines of your caption so your hashtags will be hidden.
Line breaks work with both notification and Auto Published posts scheduled with Later. Even on our free plan!
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #2: Use Hyper-Relevant Hashtags to Get More Engagement
Using ultra-popular hashtags #love, #instagood, and #photooftheday might get you a few extra likes, but they aren’t going to help you grow an engaged, targeted following on Instagram.
If you’re hoping to get more genuine engagement, you need to get super-relevant and niche with your hashtags — by using hashtags that describe your account, your business, and your target market.
Take Little Spoon, for example, a delivery baby food company whose target market is expecting moms and parents with small children.
The account uses super hashtags to describe its product and business, like #littlespoon, #babyblends, #freshbabyfood, and #organicbabyfood as well as its own branded campaign hashtags like #itsfreshbaby and #nomoreoldbabyfood.
It also uses hashtags which describe their ideal customer like #babyfoodie, #girlmom, #boymom, and #babyontheway, along with community hashtags for parents like #motherhoodunplugged, #letthembelittle, and #dailyparenting.
These kinds of niche hashtags are perfect for growing a community of like-minded users around your brand.
Plus, they can also help you connect with others, improve the searchability of your posts, and gain new followers (and hopefully customers, too!).
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #3: Post Your Hashtags in the First Comment
While adding hashtags to your posts is one of the best ways to boost your engagement and get your posts in front of your target audience, too many hashtags in your captions can look untidy (or worse, spammy!).
Instead, posting your hashtags in the first comment is a great way to make your caption the star of the show, without compromising any of the engagement you can get with hashtags.
Here’s how to schedule a first comment on Instagram with Later:
Open up the post scheduler in Later. You can do this from anywhere — Later on desktop, iOS, or Android.
You’ll see a text box called “First Comment.” Enter your hashtags or any text you’d rather have in the first comment.
Schedule your post as usual (including adding your Linkin.bio link!) and the first comment is scheduled along with it.
You’re done!
You can now craft, schedule and automatically post the first comment on your Instagram posts — available on all Later paid plans!
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #4: Find the Right Hashtags for Your Posts with Hashtag Suggestions
Need some help finding those niche and industry-specific hashtags for your account? Then you may want to check out Later’s Hashtag Suggestions feature.
Hashtag Suggestions works by automatically finding relevant hashtags for your posts based on other hashtags that you use. Just give us a hashtag you’ve had success with, and we’ll show you other, related hashtags you can experiment with.
You can then pick and choose which of these hashtags to add you to your post. All you have to do is click “Insert Hashtags” and they’ll be added to the end of your caption.
Hashtag Suggestions is available on all Later business plans — upgrade now to get access!
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #5: Add Hashtags to Your Instagram Stories to Get on the Explore Page
Adding hashtags to your story is a great way to give your content an added chance to be discovered by new audiences.
When people search for a hashtag on Instagram, if it’s popular enough, they’ll be able to view active, real-time stories on that hashtag’s page – including your own.
And if they like what they see, they might even tap the follow button!
There are two different ways to add hashtags to your stories. One is by using the hashtag sticker (you can only add one hashtag with this method), and the other is by using the text tool and simply typing your hashtags out (you can add up to 10 hashtags using this method).
If you want to maximize your story’s discoverability, use this under-utilized hack and add relevant hashtags to your next story!
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #6: Hide Your Hashtags in Your Stories
As we just learned, hashtags are great for making your stories more discoverable. However, they can also ruin the aesthetic of an Instagram story and look “spammy” if you’re posting a ton on each story.
Luckily, there are tricks to get around it!
If you want to hide hashtags in your Instagram Stories, type out your hashtags, and then pinch them to make them smaller.
Now place a GIF or image sticker over the hashtag text so it’s perfectly hidden!
Or you can select the color tool from the text option and choose a color that perfectly matches your Instagram story background (this works a lot better if the background is a solid color). With just two taps, your hashtag content will magically blend into the background but still be searchable!
Keep in mind that if you make the hashtags too small, Instagram won’t register them! So the best way is to camouflage them with the background or hide them behind another design element.
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #7: Source User-Generated Content (UGC) from Hashtags
Incorporating UGC into your social strategy could be a game-changer. Not only will it save you a ton of time on content creation, but it will also help you engage with your followers and attract new ones.
But how do you source great UGC without spending hours on the hunt?
With Later’s UGC features, you can add Instagram posts that you are mentioned or tagged in directly to your Later Media Library, making it easy to share to your social channels in just a few clicks.
Plus, you can also search by hashtags!
Let’s say you’re a high-end luxury tea company. You may have come up with a branded hashtag (like #LittleLuxurTEA) that your followers use. You can keep this saved as a search in Later to display the last 7 days of posts across Instagram that use your hashtag, and add those posts to your library for sharing.
If you don’t use a branded hashtag, you can still find content that’s popular within your community. Using our luxury tea example, you could search for #TeaTime or something similar to see what kind of content tea lovers are posting.
You can search up to 30 unique hashtags per Instagram account over a 7-day rolling window, but only posts in the last 24 hours will show in the results.
Search by hashtag is available to all Later users with an Instagram business profile – for free.
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #8: Track Your Instagram Hashtag Success
Those who’ve switched to a business profile not only have the ability to check on how their accounts are growing over time with Instagram’s analytics, but they can also analyze how individual posts are performing and compare the specific results from each.
What does this mean for you?
You’ll be able to see exactly how effective your posts are at attracting a new audience, based on impressions from various sources — including your Instagram hashtags!
To access this information, select the post you want to get more detailed analytics on and tap “View Insights” in the bottom left.
Then swipe up to see the full page of data for that post, including things like reach, impressions, and interestingly enough, how the people who viewed your post found you.
Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t tell you which hashtags were the most effective in getting your posts discovered — so the takeaways can be somewhat limited.
If you’re looking for more in-depth analytics around your hashtag success, you may want to check out Later’s Hashtag Analytics tool.
It lets you track key insights about the hashtags you use, including a breakdown of which hashtags are driving the most likes, comments, impressions, saves, and reach on your Instagram posts.
You can use this data to see which hashtags are driving the most engagement on your posts. Once you find your top-performing hashtags, you can use them regularly to get even more engagement and traction for your business.
Instagram Hashtag Analytics is available on all Later business plans.
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #9: Follow Your Favorite Hashtags on Instagram
Did you know that you can follow hashtags just like you follow other accounts?
This is an under-utilized trick that has a ton of business uses. For example, you can encourage your existing audience to follow your branded hashtags so that you connect more easily with your community.
Or you can use the feature to keep a close eye on competitors and even discover potential partners by choosing to follow industry-specific hashtags.
When you find a hashtag you’d like to follow you simply open the hashtag page and tap on the “Follow” button.
Once you’ve selected to follow a hashtag you’ll begin seeing top posts from that hashtag in your feed and some of the latest stories in your stories bar.
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #10: Organize Your Hashtags More Effectively with Saved Captions
It used to be that the best way to organize your hashtags was with a spreadsheet, like Excel or Google Sheets. You would create a spreadsheet with headers like “hashtags,” “category,” “# of posts,” and more, and then actively fill it out as you found new effective hashtags.
Luckily, there’s a better and more time-effective way!
With Later’s Saved Captions feature, you can now create multiple hashtag lists based on your frequently used hashtag categories, all from your Later account.
For example, let’s say you run a travel brand and often post photos of beautiful locations around the world. Instead of trying to remember (or find) relevant hashtags for every post, you can use Saved Captions to keep them all organized, so you can quickly add them when scheduling in the future.
If you want to schedule a photo of a beach in San Diego, since you’ve already saved hashtags for different categories, you can we can insert relevant hashtags for beaches, California, travel, and San Diego with just the click of a button!
After you’ve written your caption, just click on “Saved Captions” and then click on the appropriate hashtag list to instantly add those hashtags to your caption.
Saved Captions is available on all Later plans — including our free plan!
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #11: Add Hashtags to Your Instagram Bio
Whether you’re promoting an Instagram contest or UGC campaign, including your branded hashtag in your Instagram bio is a fantastic way to drive engagement on your posts!
What’s so great about this feature is that it makes your bio even more functional — you can use hashtags for everything from promoting your Instagram community to highlighting your branded content and announcing your Instagram campaigns.
Including your branded hashtag in your bio is also a great way to get your followers in the habit of posting with it.
All you have to do is include a “#” before any word in your bio and it will automatically become a clickable link that leads visitors to that hashtag.
Instagram Hashtag Hacks #12: Use 10+ Hashtags to Increase Your Engagement Rate
We recently teamed up with the experts at Fohr to learn more about how hashtags are being used and what the biggest trends are for 2020.
One of our biggest insights? Instagram posts that include hashtags get more engagement… a lot more!
After analyzing influencer posts that contain hashtags, the data shows using more hashtags actually results in a higher engagement rate.
The sweet spot? 10+ hashtags per post!
This is especially true for accounts with less than 25K followers.
So if you’re a new brand or a micro-influencer looking for new ways to grow your following, having a strong Instagram hashtag strategy could be a fast-pass to a boosted follower count.
Instagram hashtags are a great way to connect with customers, find content created about you by your followers, and build long-term relationships with influential partners.
Hopefully, these Instagram hashtag hacks and tricks have sparked some new ideas that you can implement on your own account!
Ready to get moving with your Instagram marketing strategy? Later makes it easy for you to plan, manage, and schedule your Instagram posts!
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