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Keep Failing at Hashtags…or Don’t.
You may think that your Hashtag game is great. Maybe it is, but I’m going to bet you 100 bucks that if you are reading this it most likely isn’t. I will give you a few hashtag tracking tools to help you track your hashtag success and keep your growth moving forward without those failing hashtags.
Why I Know You Are Doing It Wrong
Even the savviest of all Instagrammers may be missing the winning link: the ability to target a group of hashtags that can actually generate REAL and authentic followers in a specific niche! It is a common topic these days to want to grow a following base on Instagram like how you can on Facebook. Targeted ads, a specific demographic and interest group are all part of what Facebook allows when creating content to promote. Where does Instagram stack up? How can we track our hashtag success and are there tools to do so?
If you are Hashtagging correctly, you can do this on Instagram and never pay a single dollar for any paid “boosting” of posts. Now just adding “better” hashtags to your post is obviously a good start, but you’re missing a huge chunk of potential growth if you stop there.
Let me give you 3 simple steps to growing at maximum potential
- Be aware of your hashtag choice.
- Choosing hashtags that match your niche market, or are “relevant” to your line of work, is very important! However, if you are choosing a hashtag like “entrepreneur” that has roughly 23 million hits per day, you are likely going to be off the recent/top posts feed within seconds of posting. Sucks right? You are missing out on a huge network of people who could be itching to find your style of content. How can you fix this problem? Choose a hashtag with the same goal as entrepreneur but is used significantly less. Example? #entrepreneurtips gets around 38k hits per day. Same market, likely the exact same type of people, but your chance of hitting the “top” posts and staying on top of the feed is…well you do the exact math…but immensely higher! Use Instagram’s tag feature as a tool to help you track your hashtag’s popularity.
- Here are some noteworthy examples…and some FREE examples for you to add to your hashtag list.
- If you’re are an influencer:
- Instead of using Influencer (2,699,834 hits) use Influenced (20,390 hits)
- If you’re an entrepreneur:
- Instead of using Entrepreneur (23,539,844 hits) use Entrepreneurgoals (19,695 hits)
- If you’re a lifestyle blogger:
- Instead of using Lifestyleblogger (6,004,326 hits) use lifestylebloggers (244,847 hits)
- If you’re a photographer:
- Instead of using photography (165,060,208 hits) use photographyclass (86,454 hits)
- If you’re are an influencer:
- Are you catching my drift? If you aren’t please email me and let’s talk about it. The goal here is to generate hashtags that are engaging to your niche, but narrow enough where your post will gain visibility and traction in the explore page and the “top” posts.
- Don’t stop once you post.
- Many people fail to realize that once you post with these “unique” hashtags that your job has really only just begun. Your journey to growth starts with you and thankfully you have already taken the first step. Now that you have the unique hashtags it’s time to take action on them. What should you do? Click on every one of the hashtags you use and like and comment on other people’s content that fall within your similar niche. Obviously they are using the same hashtag as you for a reason. So find it! Another trick? Comment with authenticity. Stop with the fake, “great post!” or “cool post” comments because that will do you no good. Everyone does that and if you want to stand out you have to be better than that. How about something meaningful like, “Wow, this is something I have implemented in my work too and have seen great results!” Two things will happen. First, you will likely get an equally honest response from the creator of the content, and second you will probably get a follower out of it!
- Spend time on Collaboration
- Personally I have seen more and more opportunities to collaborate as I have continued on this unique hashtag journey. I get people everyday asking me how we could come up with content together, what they can do to help me with my business, as well as offers for income opportunity! Who doesn’t want that? I encourage you to be open and aware of these styles of opportunities. Some of your best connections could come from a comment you authentically made, even if you have LESS followers then someone else who may have contacted the same person.
Stop Failing, Start Doing
You are your own best chance at success. Every entrepreneur has to go through this season of ups and down, corrections and mistakes. What we do with these mistakes is our only hope at trudging onward. Hashtagging is a growth journey, not a destination. You may think your brilliant use of #love is going to help you hit the explore page simply because it is one of the most used hashtag on Instagram. Sorry friends but #love gets 1,172,487,024 uses PER day. You wont win any races with that one.
So what can you do? Narrow it downnnn! Way, way down. Be open to using unique hashtags that will help you reach the same market you want to reach but with a much smaller lens. Be authentic and not in the “cool, awesome, yay!” kind of way. Ask questions on posts, comment with relatable words and choose sincerity over “common.” Open your ears as far as they can go. Scan the posts for opportunity to network with like minded people. If someone comments asking how they can help you, send them a message, dang it! You NEVER know, and won’t ever know, if you don’t allow for the reach out to occur.
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