Hashtags or No Hashtags?

underachieved said:

Don't rely on hashtags. Rely on quality content

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If Instagram has a biased algorithm, what you're suggesting doesn't help at all. Even though it is generally true for any social media network, it doesn't mean that the pages that get the most engagement are the ones that are posting the highest quality content.

fxmanaged said:

No disrespect, but we've been running Instagram-centric businesses for over 5 years and I also know many marketers that have been running Instagram pages for that long and haven't seen anything conclusive in that area to say that one way works best than the other. In fact, I constantly read opposing views on the subject on Reddit and BHW. You cannot make a theory out of a limited set of data.

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Now, I own and am also in contact with many successful pages in Instagram, most who use Comments for 1 reason,

Leaving it in the Caption Results in the good old "Read More" now this can be different in different categories such as Articles and News Related things, but as for something with a small caption such as "Good Morning" than spacing and hashtags results in the "Read More" which isn't signature to peoples desires which results in many different behaviors such as effects on Credibility, Hate, UnFollows.

I have done most, In comments it gets saturated so people won't be able to find them so it's undetected basically unless someone intentionally looks for it.

I've done my research, I've spent many hours on Instagram, Many years to be exact, With many other mentors, business partners and friends.

This has been specifically something I've looked into and with tests with many accounts ranging from 0-500k Followers, and all of the Data came back that using Caption Hashtags resulted in drops of followers (Not Much) but just some, People leaving comments about the hashtags.

And don't worry I don't feel disrespected, I know I am credible, I know I have credible sources and I am confident in my years of knowledge from growing accounts in Instagram

Thanks!

DillonOuthw said:

Now, I own and am also in contact with many successful pages in Instagram, most who use Comments for 1 reason,

Leaving it in the Caption Results in the good old "Read More" now this can be different in different categories such as Articles and News Related things, but as for something with a small caption such as "Good Morning" than spacing and hashtags results in the "Read More" which isn't signature to peoples desires which results in many different behaviors such as effects on Credibility, Hate, UnFollows.

I have done most, In comments it gets saturated so people won't be able to find them so it's undetected basically unless someone intentionally looks for it.

I've done my research, I've spent many hours on Instagram, Many years to be exact, With many other mentors, business partners and friends.

This has been specifically something I've looked into and with tests with many accounts ranging from 0-500k Followers, and all of the Data came back that using Caption Hashtags resulted in drops of followers (Not Much) but just some, People leaving comments about the hashtags.

And don't worry I don't feel disrespected, I know I am credible, I know I have credible sources and I am confident in my years of knowledge from growing accounts in Instagram

Thanks!

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I agree with you in principle, but I just haven't seen enough convincing data to conclude that Instagram reacts more favorably, as far as ranking your content for hashtags and increasing the reach of your posts is concerned, when hashtags are added in the comments vs. the captions.

Personally, I think that hashtags look better when added as the first comments (kind of like kicking the dust under the rug). I've always preferred that for aesthetic purposes.

However, the recent unpredictability of the algorithm changes and the ongoing discussions (hashtags vs. no hashtags / comments vs captions) have made me rethink this entire strategy.

It is true that a lot of people will hate seeing a glob of tags in the captions, but the reality is that at the end of the day, if the loss of visually picky followers is relatively smaller that the much greater follower growth that you might get from an expanded reach that's associated with "cracking the hashtag code" (if that's even possible), then placing HTs in the comments might not matter at the end.

Follower growth is the key and not everyone will unfollow a page just because the hashtags are in the captions, especially if they feel that the quality of the content on the page more than makes up for the visual imperfections.

So, my view is that visually, I prefer hashtags in the comments, but if it means that my follower growth will be hurt as a result, then I'm placing them in the captions.

I know luxury pages (one of the industries I'm in) that have been using hashtags in the captions for years and they continue to grow at a very good rate. Just look at vertigo1983 on IG.

Another thing worth mentioning is that now Instagram is ranking post comments by relevance, so hashtags placed in comments are not fixed as before and move all over the place in a post's comment stream. This makes them a bit more awkward-looking, since people scrolling through comments will see them floating around in between other comments. That is not ideal. Despite this fact, I still visually prefer to stick them in the comments section, but not if the Instagram algo prefers something else.

DillonOuthw said:

Defiantly use hashtags, How you use them is a different story.

How To Use Them:

• Change Them Frequently
• Don't use Max Hashtags
• Don't use over saturated Hashtags
• Comment them don't use to description

Those are just some of the many things you need to keep in mind while using Hashtags.

Hope this helped!

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commenting them looks scruffy

Honestly I've never been a huge fan of the hashtags.
It's a sure way to bring ghost followers and spammy accounts to your account.

I've hears stories of people who had success with them so i believe if you use them right they might help you,but I prefer not dealing with them atm

Ludvan123 said:

Honestly I've never been a huge fan of the hashtags.
It's a sure way to bring ghost followers and spammy accounts to your account.

I've hears stories of people who had success with them so i believe if you use them right they might help you,but I prefer not dealing with them atm

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You're right. The ghost followers are indeed an issue with them. Right now we're experimenting blocking ghost followers on one of our pages to see if it has any long term effect on the page's engagement.

Lad, hashtags are wonderful if they are RLC.

Relevant to post
Limited in quantity
Changed frequently from post to post

#YaaaaaaaayACRONYMS

Is that so, but i think hastags are working just fine. Please update for any changes.

johnsubin05 said:

Is that so, but i think hastags are working just fine. Please update for any changes.

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It's not that simple. Read my above comments.

Tbh I have never really searched using hashtags, I just look at my recommended. I am interested to see how this turns out

eCloudCorp said:

Tbh I have never really searched using hashtags, I just look at my recommended. I am interested to see how this turns out

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Yes, a lot of marketers say that the only people that search using hashtags are marketers. That might be true overall, but the question here is whether or not hashtags affect overall engagement and if it's possible for the average page to reach the explorer page without them.

I dont use hastags

alexlopeztv said:

I dont use hastags

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How long have you not been using hashtags and why do you do it that way?

What do you guys do when your hashtags don't seem to be appearing on the list.
Does that mean that instagram put a hashtag block on the account or proxy?
I had this happen for a bit earlier in the year and then the posts suddenly started appearing in the lists again.
Seems to be happening to some new accounts that I created. Tested it with one hashtag on the first post on the account and the post didn't appear anywhere

1. IG SEM Vs. Aesthetic: most people are now used to seeing hashtags in comments, so doesn't matter, go ahead.
2. Do they matter? Yes.
3. Will they make or break your post? No. But they help somewhat.
4. Should you change them all the time? Yes.
5. Does reposting already-indexed images may affect post visibility? I would wager yes indeed. The algorithm should not treat it tremendously different as Google's does with duplicate websites having the exact same copy over and over
6. Caption hashtags vs. comment hashtags: do both, I would not hit the max of 30 though.
7. "But what about @____? He never uses hashtags and has 5 million followers." Don't look at what someone does today when they are already big, look at what they did for the past few years to get there.
8. Now go make some $$$