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Hello Instagram lovers, welcome to another episode of Instagram unveiled a podcast that is Poland back Instagrams curtain of success and uncovering how to build a loyal following. I'm your host Marc McKenna. Hammond and this is episode 5 titled what hashtag should I use and why every time I say this is episode I feel like I'm Ryan Seacrest about to say, this is American Idol but hashtags which is the theme of this podcast episode are simply not about getting likes comments or follows. If we are using them for this then we aren't using them correctly personally. I Been effectively use them all the time, but I'm learning unique ways to better utilize hashtags that I'm not wasting my time anymore. Here's a really important question that we all need to have answered before we can fully utilize and even though which hashtags to use and that is why are we even using Instagram? It's pretty simple. I've spoken to numerous people about this question and there are different reasons why they use it and for example some use it to showcase the daily life or Instagram acts as a journal and the appreciate the validation that is received. From friends family and other instagrammers. I've talked with others who use the app to establish a personal brand and our focus on increasing awareness or would like to make an influential impact by backing a creating or creating a cause to Rally behind and or sell products and services for their business. Whatever our y might be my intuition tells me that it is important for us to realize what it is to write it down and pretty much to focus all our efforts on that why this is going to be really beneficial when choosing the hashtags for opposed Instagram story. And I GTV personally, I'm on Instagram because I'm establishing a personal brand around social media specifically Instagram and at the moment. I'm focusing 80% Time on Instagram and my podcast Instagram unveiled while the other 20% is being spent working on my website my blog and soon-to-be YouTube channel. Keep an eye out for that one. I want other personal Brands influencers outdoor an event companies to know I love creating educational and entertaining content for Instagram stories videos for IG TV and YouTube testing and I have somebody just a zest for learning all themes social. That is my why I want to know what your why is you can definitely let me know on Instagram at Mark underscore McCammon. It's also in the description of this episode my Instagram handle, but now that we know why we are using the platform. I can actually unveil why we should be using hashtags and not just any hashtag. It's been reported and shared by HubSpot late. Are Sprout social and others that oppose that includes one hashtag? Averages 12.6 percent more engagement than if they didn't include any hashtags at all according to Instagrams Business website 80% of all Instagram accounts, which is over 1 billion are following a business. The opportunity is to reach and connect with a vast amount of people all over the world. It's incredible. It's crazy. And as you already may know Instagram allows its users to use up to 30 hashtags per post. Post now there is a lot of debate as to what the sweet spot is. Is it the full 30 is it 28? Is it 11 five or even six the guessing can be endless online? Like I've had so many different opinions on the matter. So personally I use only 28 hashtags in order to stay a little bit below the maximum. I've read enough articles to know that Instagram doesn't like spammy accounts, but it doesn't mean our 30 hashtags if we choose to use that many will be flagged. It's just a precaution that I tend to use. Is now if we're looking to grow our account and increase engagement we need to be using hashtags period also do not have a private account make sure your accounts actually public so people can actually see your content. As I said in the beginning of this episode hashtags are not about likes excuse me comments or follows. So what exactly are they about them? Because I've been talking and sharing. In stats about increasing engagement hashtags are about our target market. I've use hashtags over the years that were General and even somewhat specific but none of those hashtags were helpful in increasing traffic to my website to my podcast at all. I was bringing in the wrong people. I might have been getting a lot of likes which doesn't do much for my brand and my business in any way. I was getting the wrong traffic the wrong traffic on my HGTV the wrong traffic on my post stories podcasts website. I've learned that if I want to be discovered boost reach and Community engagement and analyze. What content is performing better over others. I can use popular and general hashtags, no worries. But if I want to have loyal followers and increase conversions getting people that want to visit my website listen to my podcast by my product or service you name it. Like I need to use Target specific hashtags that are relevant. To my content and audience and that are not too saturated. I use something called long tail keywords this like a fancy SEO term that's used to describe according to hit tail.com highly specific Niche Search terms that usually consists of three or more words and are much easier to rank or right because they have low competition. So this brings me to tip number one. One do not use saturated hashtags. I tend to use hashtags that don't have more than 1 million posts on them. If I do they are relevant and there's no more than 5 but even those will not be in the tens of Millions. But close to 1 million, I tend to use hashtags. I have a range of 2,000 to 5,000 to 500,000 posts. Now if you want, I want you to search a hashtag on the explore page to see this out and type love or insta good these hashtags are perfect examples of having too many people using them and our photos will be buried in a tsunami of photos. If we do choose to use them we might get more. Likes but is it targeting the right people tip number two use specific long tail hashtags for my most recent post 20 of the 20 hashtags were long-term phrases. For example building my Empire Marketing on Instagram Instagram marketing tips business by Design community over competition. Don't worry. I'm not going to be all 20 of them. But if you want to know more of the examples that I've used you can head over to my most Post on Instagram. Yeah, my handle is in the description these hashtag examples are not too saturated and they give me a higher chance of being featured in the explore page and the top post section for the hashtags rather than just the recent section because typically when you use a hash tag, your post goes to the recent section and it's only there for a certain period of time it's kind of like the pre algorithm days whenever you posted a post. post on your feed your followers can see at the time you posted it not based off of you know content they value or these things that our nature it's good though that they've see content they value but on the hashtags you're targeting people that have no idea probably fuyu even are and so it will only be the first set amount of time but eventually get buried so you want to go to the top post and my post from yesterday that Capital cherry blossom one that I took was featured in 18 of the Top post sections of the 28 hashtags that I used this lets my content stay front and center for viewers in my target market. It's not going to be buried in just a few minutes or even hours the long tail hashtags. Now I shared and use are also relevant to my social media brand message people that use these hashtags tend to be entrepreneurs personal Brands influencers and are either looking for or sharing tips on Ram or social media in general Tip number three. This is a question. Like where do I find such long tail? Keyword phrases, you know, I've gone this question before you know, how do I pick keywords or these hashtags if they're so long? Where do I find them? What I've realized is I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I don't need to create a hashtag or search through endless hashtags on the Instagram app or even use a hashtag generator to on the internet. All you have to do is search for instagrammers who are in your Niche and see what hashtags that are using. For example, I looked up accounts who are heavily invested in Sharing tips about Instagram. I went to the search and typed Instagram marketing and I simply just looked at the accounts. You don't have to copy all the hashtags they use but I use ones that are relevant to my message and I make sure to check out the hashtag as well. So I click on the hashtag and I see. Kind of content is in the top and recent sections you're going to want to create content that would fit in here but also has your own unique style as well to it. This will help you determine if you even want to use this hashtag to Showcase your content because honestly, I found plenty of hashtags that seem so perfect but simply the content I was being posted on those hashtags on a regular basis was not that kind of content. I I wanted to create nor the content. I want my target market to really focus on and see so my audience probably wasn't even going to these hashtags. It wouldn't make much of an impact with that particular hashtag content tip number four use hashtags in every post Instagram story IG TV and not in your bio instead of posting our hashtags after the our caption with the vast number of dashes or emojis. Which is what I've done in the past in order to separate the hashtags in the caption. All we have to do is place the hashtags in the first comment. It's out of sight out of mind when people will read our post caption. They won't be bombarded with this blue distraction. It's like this little blue monsters. There's so many and the same with Instagram stories. We can use up to 10 hashtags per story to be possibly featured in a hashtag story and we can hide all of them behind. A location sticker or a mention sticker. All you have to do is pinch them pretty small and place them right behind it that simple if you want to know three other ways to hide your Instagram stories. Feel free to check out my podcast episode for its titled for ways to hide Instagram story hashtags. IG TV is pretty much the same as a post when it comes to hashtags and I still only include 28 now. I do not include any hashtags in my bio. Which a lot of people are doing now is becoming a kind of a trend but I don't know. Why would I ever want to put a hashtag on my bio because that's just going to drive people off my account unless it is to promote a contest to some sort that I'm running. I don't see why anyone would want to include hashtags in their bio tip number five create a few hashtag lists and test and review and track post insights. I have found that it is valuable if we are constantly looking for new van hashtags to use and not just rely too much on one list of 28 or 30. So what I try to do is I travel a few list of hashtags to switch off from or I take out a few and add a few new hash tags and you know different ones but not aligned with my content that I'm about to share. It can't take a lot of time like I've spent I spent quite a few hours to be honest, looking throughout different hashtags over time for that will really fit my content, but it is so worth the investment because I'm seeing some fantastic results from it again. For example, my post yesterday 18 of the top post sections of the 20 hashtags. I used I was featured in those top post areas. I only have 535 followers. So something I'm hitting on right now with these hashtags. We can also check out some analytics for each of our posts. So if you have a business account go to your photo that you've just posted or post a while ago click on view insights and swipe up on the insights that pop up to get a more comprehensive View. You're able to see how many Impressions your hashtags got for the post and I track this data in Excel or Google sheet because that's extremely valuable, you know to know the spikes in the type of hashtags and content. We're using it's really going to be impactful for future content that we create. So I hope you found this episode valuable. I'm on a journey to discover how to make the most of the social platforms, especially Instagram and Judge others to join with me on this Learning Journey. Let's learn together. I would love to know any questions or feedback that you might have. So feel free to reach out and connect with me on Instagram at Mark underscore McCammon. My Instagram handle is in the description of the episode or feel free to shoot me an email Instagram unveiled at gmail.com. Thanks for listening.
Hello Instagram Lovers! In this episode, I unveil that hashtags are not for just increasing ones engagement with their posts or stories. Although I have used hashtags primarily for increasing my accounts likes, comments, and follower count in the past, I've realized that this was not  helping me drive the right people to my podcast, website, or content. In order to get the most out of hashtags, we need to know why we are using Instagram and then to focus on creating long-tail hashtags, a fancy SEO term I cover in the episode, that are specific to our target audience. If you don't want to waste any more time trying to figure why or which hashtags to use for Instagram, then you will love this comprehensive podcast episode. Sit back, grab a notepad, and enjoy. This one will be worth taking notes on. 