Find quality hashtags with this easy-to-apply strategy:
In this article, Iāve outlined a simple but effective starting point for finding hashtags when youāre not too sure where to start!
Start with competitors
Broaden your options with Flick
Finding the perfect hashtags for your account
As an example, Iām going to use a photographer who posts portraiture content and receives between 200 and 300 likes per post.
Weāll be finding hashtags for this piece of content:
šµļøāāļø Start with competitors:
Luckily, when it comes to hashtags, tens of thousands of Instagram users have already tried reaching a similar audience and have done a portion of the initial work for us!
Letās start by finding a few popular accounts that post similar content to you.
For this example, Iāve searched āPortrait photographyā on Instagram to locate a few accounts.
Now, have a look through a couple of the accounts until you find one that you like! Ideally, an account that posts content similar to the post youāre about to make.
Interestingly, most accounts that appear in the search will use hashtags. This is because Instagram uses hashtags to
classify accounts ā something you can learn more about in our
Complete Guide to Instagram Hashtags.
Pick out a few hashtags from each account that are related to your content and note them down.
Using a couple of accounts found from my initial search, Iāve chosen:
#portraits_vision
#earth_portraits
#portraitstream
#portraits_ig
#bleachmyfilm
#vscogram\
š Broaden your options with Flick
Now youāve gathered the appropriate foundations, letās build on this.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you donāt have any search filters active (by not using filters, weāre allowing Flick to find the most diverse set of related hashtags).
Search each of the hashtags you noted down earlier, in Flick.
If youāve searched five hashtags as I have, youāll now have 50 different hashtag options (10 for every hashtag searched) that we expand upon.
Now is when we want to apply search filters.
You can use Flickās suggested filters (weād advise this). Alternatively, set filters manually based on your pre-existing strategy.
For the account I described above, Iāve applied filters that:
Ensure the average likes of the hashtags returned are less than 350
Ensure there have been more than 5,000 posts into the hashtags returned (media count)
Now, expand relevant hashtags from each of your initial searches and select appropriate and relevant hashtags as you go.
š Finding hashtags perfect for your account
Itās worth reminding yourself that the hashtags youāre seeing after expanding are the optimal size for your account, so your job (at this stage) is to find the most relevant.
Pro Tip: Building a hashtag strategy is a marathon, not a sprint. Start with finding a few nice sets of hashtags and focus on optimizing once youāve got the hang of this part first!
You can either export these straight to your clipboard or add them to a collection. We always advise building up your collections so when it comes to posting, you can pick and choose hashtags from different groups!
Here are my final hashtags, that are:
Related to my content
Related to my account
Rankable for my account
#kings_portraits_ #femalephotography #portraitholics #top_portaits #londonheadshotphotographer #portraitvibes #portrait_photographer #discovercreatives #dopeportraitssa #portraitsphotographer #feedmeports #visualtones #vancouverportraits #featuretheframe #modelslouisiana #lenslife #ishootpeople #killerportraits #portastic #brake_frames #vscocollective #myvsco #vscodays #moodylookz #portraitshotz #potrait_universe #portraitnation #womenpotraits #atlantaheadshots #londonheadshots
All hashtags receive between 250 and 300 averages likes on the content that is ranking in the top 9.