Let's find some hashtags! 🕵️‍♀️

Now that you have an idea of the guidelines and the plan we’ll be following, let’s get started with your hashtag research. In this section, you will learn how to successfully find the right hashtags for your account that will help you reach your target audience. We will also showcase how this fits in with your overall strategy, and explain why these tactics will increase the reach of your posts. By the end of this lesson, you should have a sound understanding of the best ways to search for hashtags, as well as a list of optimized hashtags that you can start using on your posts!

Instagram hashtag metrics you need to know

Much like every other area of marketing, the success of your strategy depends on core underlying metrics - by taking a look under the hood, and understanding which metrics impact different areas of your account, you’re more likely to find success in your strategy. 

Across the hashtag metrics outlined in this lesson, you’ll notice their primary use is to help you differentiate hashtags by their level of difficulty to rank - It’s important to keep in mind that there’s always a trade-off between the level of competition and your return in Impressions - which is why it’s important to use a balance the types of hashtags you use within your posts.

Average Likes / Comments: 

The Average Likes of a hashtag is the average number of likes that the top 9 posts get on that specific hashtag. Your Average Likes, is the rough average number of likes you get on the content you generally share on your Instagram account. 

Typically, if you receive a similar amount of engagement, or exceed the engagement of a hashtag’s top-performing content, you’re more likely to rank in the ‘top 9’. This can make it hard for smaller accounts to compete. However, we have some tricks to help you out, and we’ve seen accounts with as low as 50 likes per post rank on hashtags rank on hashtags with 800+ average likes. And remember, relevancy is still one of the most important factors in getting results.

Media Count / Total Posts: 

Media count is the total number of posts that have been made using a hashtag. This gives you an idea of how popular the hashtag is, which in turn gives you an indication as to whether you’ll be able to compete. A good rule of thumb is that hashtags with millions of posts will be a lot more competitive than those with say, 50,000. 

Smaller accounts tend to do better by using hashtags that have roughly 500k total posts, but it’s still worth testing a few larger ones because if your post does rank the reward from these large hashtags is very fruitful!

DAPC (Daily Average Post Count): 

The average number of posts made into a hashtag, daily (Based on the last 7 days of activity). Much like the metrics above, hashtags with a higher DAPC tend to be harder to compete on because you’re competing against a lot more people!  

Competition Score: 

The volume of people you’ll be competing against on a specific hashtag. (Hashtag metric exclusive to Flick and computed using the metrics above to make choosing hashtags easier).

Potential Reach Score: 

The amount of people you’re likely to reach if you rank on a specific hashtag. (Hashtag metric exclusive to Flick and computed using the metrics above to make choosing hashtags easier).

Finding hashtags for the 8-Post Hashtag Challenge

Welcome to one of the more labor-intensive lessons in the course. Here you'll be undertaking your own hashtag research and will walk away with over 60 hashtags that have been tailored to your account, niche, and engagement rate. Not too bad eh? Let's get into it!

Now that you’re ready, let’s start searching! The best way to find the right hashtags is by opening up your Flick search tool and getting stuck in. 

Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Start by searching a variety of hashtags based on the sub-niches you outlined at the beginning of the course and, if you find yourself getting stuck, move over to some of the hashtags you saw competitor accounts using and search those. 

2. After you have 5-10 search tabs open in Flick’s Search, apply filters that will make sure these hashtags are in a suitable range of competition for your account. Use the Average Likes, and Total Posts metrics to narrow the search down to just one of your sets. Adjust the filter parameters as you create each set.

3. When selecting hashtags make sure they’re relevant by using our 'preview featured content' tool to see the existing top-performing content for that hashtag. Pick a few hashtags from each of your search tabs to ensure you’re spreading yourself across lots of the sub-niches that are relevant to your posts.

4. Take your time. You will benefit from spending the extra time and effort it takes to ensure your hashtags are relevant and the right size for your account! P.S, if you're finding it hard with just the initial searches you've made, you can use Flick's 'Expand' feature to explore hashtags related to any of the hashtags you see in the table.

5. Once you’ve got 10 hashtags in your first Collection change your ‘Total Posts/Media count’ filter to match the next Collection and repeat the process until you’ve got 10 hashtags in each of your 6 Collections.

If you’ve not been watching the video content, we heavily advise doing so for this video in particular. It’s a lot easier to get to grips with how Flick works and how you should be approaching this task by watching someone else take you through the entire process! 

How do I find hashtags as a smaller account?

If you receive less than 300 likes on your posts, we suggest adjusting your approach in the way that you find hashtags that we outlined in the previous video. It's still essential that you follow the steps that we have outlined for searching hashtags above - this is just a slightly tweaked version of the same strategy, that will help smaller accounts succeed.

We've created a strategy that is specifically designed for smaller accounts that want to find hashtags for the 8-Post Hashtag Challenge - the results you get from the challenge as a smaller account using this method will be a lot better!

As a smaller account, it's harder to find hashtags within your range of competitiveness, and when you do, it may mean the hashtags you're using aren't popular enough to drive new Impressions and follows.

You'll still organize your Hashtag Collections based on the total number of posts inside of them, but rather than finding hashtags based on your average engagement, you will fill each Hashtag Collection with:

• 6 hashtags that have an Average Likes between '150-350'

• 4 hashtags with an Average Likes between '350 - 800'

Bonus Content ⚡️

We heard your questions, and we've provided some additional videos in this module to help you with your hashtag research.

Although we've been pretty extensive with this course, there's always more to learn or get a deeper understanding of. That's why we have created additional content based on frequently asked questions - enjoy!

Banned / Flagged Hashtags

How Flick's New Advanced Filters Work (New filters coming soon)

https://youtu.be/IsCpAV4nOow