It often seems like the entire world is on Instagram these days. With 1 billion active users every month, that is not too far off the mark. 

The highly visual nature of Instagram appeals to users, which is why it has the highest engagement rate of any social media platform. All of these things form the perfect climate for your business to grow, and hashtags play a key role in that.

Let us look at what Instagram hashtags are and how you can use them to your benefit.

What Are Instagram Hashtags? Are They Important?  

Hashtags are words (or a combination of words) with the # sign in front of them. Examples: #photography, #MorningCoffee. Hashtags can include numbers and emojis, too.

Instagram hashtags serve two important purposes:

1. They categorize your content
2. They make your posts discoverable

The most important feature of a hashtag is that it is clickable. This means that when you click on a hashtag or conduct a hashtag search, you will be redirected to a page which contains all the posts that have been uploaded with the hashtag.

Instagram even allows you to follow hashtags. When you do, all the posts containing that particular hashtag will show up on your feed. 

Let us say that you want to discover new artists for a campaign you are running. You can follow the most common hashtags related to art, and voila! You’ll find tons of new artists. No more scouring through the internet for hours. 

Similarly, hashtags make it easier for other people to discover your content. You can even create your own brand-specific hashtags and encourage your followers and influencers to use it. This way, you can build your own online community. 

In short, hashtags are a powerful marketing tool. If used right, they can make your brand more discoverable and help you grow your account without you having to spend tons of time promoting your content. 

How To Find The Most Trending Instagram Hashtags

We’ve talked about what hashtags are, and why they are important. But it’s not as easy as just slapping on some hashtags to your post and calling it a day. You need to use relevant and trending instagram hashtags. 

But how do we find them?

Through Instagram:

One of the best ways to find them is through Instagram itself. There are three ways in which you can do this:

1) Follow popular accounts in your niche (including influencers), and make a note of all the hashtags they use. Pick and choose the ones that seem to fit you best.

2) Type a phrase that is related to your niche, and many other similar hashtags will pop up. 

3) Follow a hashtag relevant to your niche. It will show you other related hashtags above the “top” and “recent” tabs.

After you note down hashtags that you think would be useful for you, just click on them and look at all the posts. Are the posts relevant to your niche? Do they match the stuff that you usually post about? If yes, then it’s a good hashtag to use.

For example, let’s say you post a lot of nature photographs. And you’ve chosen a hashtag that is filled with selfies of people. Obviously, this is not relevant to you, even though both these things technically fall under the umbrella of photography. So that hashtag isn’t one that you should use. 

Through third party apps and websites: 

Finding trending hashtags using Instagram is a bit of a hassle. It requires a lot of trial and error, and you need to spend a lot of time on it. So the next best thing is finding live trending hashtags for Instagram using third party apps and websites that have been created for this exact purpose! 

You just have to enter a word, and these apps will show you a list of all the relevant trending Instagram hashtags, including how many photos have been tagged with that particular hashtag. Cool, right? Makes your job much easier!

Some hashtag generators are Keyword Tool, All Hashtag, and Inflact. Find an example of hashtags generated by Inflact below.

Now that that’s taken care of, let’s look at some tips and tricks on how you can use hashtags to achieve social media fame.

Instagram Hashtags Best Practices (Tips and Tricks) 

The most important thing to keep in mind is to only use relevant hashtags. For example, if you’re a travel company, don’t use generic hashtags such as #love or #happiness. 

Yes, traveling does evoke feelings of love and happiness, but you should use hashtags based on what people will search for to land on your content. Someone searching for travel destinations isn’t going to look for #love. 

The second tip is that just using the most popular hashtags aren’t enough. You need to use ones that are tailored to your account. The trick is to use a mix of the most popular and least popular hashtags. This gives you a better chance of ranking. 

If you look at the top ranking posts in the popular hashtags, most of them will be from accounts that have millions of followers. It can be hard to beat that, so choose your tags carefully. 

Third, create your own branded hashtags, and encourage your followers to use it (by putting it on your bio, or running a giveaway). This will help you create your own little community.  

Fourth, don’t use the same hashtags in the same order for every post. Shuffle them up frequently.

Finally, use hashtags on your stories and reels to attract more attention!

Frequently Asked Questions 

1. How many hashtags should I use on Instagram? 

Instagram lets you use up to 30 hashtags per post. A study conducted by Later revealed that the more hashtags you use, the more reach you get. So I would recommend using between 20-30 hashtags for optimal results. Don’t forget to use relevant ones and relevant ones only!

2. Is it better to put hashtags in the comments or captions? 

The location of your hashtags doesn’t affect their functionality much. But if you’re using uber-popular hashtags with millions of posts, it may be a good idea to post only those in your captions. For example, #fitness. You can post the rest in the comments.

If you’re worried about clunking up your caption with hashtags, then use line breaks.

3. How do I know if a hashtag is working? 

Click on the hashtag and go through the posts under the “top” tab. If you see your post featured there, it is a sure sign that that particular hashtag is working for you.

You can also use hashtag analytics tools such as Sprout Social.

4. What are the top ten hashtags? 

As of February 2022, the top ten hashtags are:

• #love
• #instagood
• #photooftheday
• #fashion
• #beautiful
• #cute
• #tbt
• #like4like
• #followme
• #happy

This is the end of your guide to trending Instagram hashtags. Find ones that are tailored to your needs and use them wisely. Don’t forget to share this post with others who may be struggling with hashtags!