Saturday the 11th of December 2021… Only one more Saturday to go until Christmas Day!

Did you know that a post with at least one Instagram hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag. So it really is worth creating a hashtag strategy for your brand if you want to grow your account!

Hashtags work by organising and categorising photos and videos.

For any public profile or business page: If you add a hashtag to a post, that post will be visible on the corresponding hashtag page (it’s basically a directory of all the photos and videos that were tagged with that hashtag).

Since hashtags are used with an intent to discover content, the right hashtags can put you in front of your target audience, even if they haven’t connected with you before.

For example, a food blogger might post a picture of a gorgeous smoothie bowl, and then use the hashtags #superfoods, #cleaneating, and #vegansofig when it’s uploaded to Instagram.

A few things to keep in mind:

• When people with private profiles tag posts, they won’t appear publicly on hashtag pages
• Numbers are allowed in hashtags. However, spaces and special characters, like $ or %, won’t work.
• You can only add hashtags to your own posts. You can’t tag other people’s photos/videos.

How many hashtags for different platforms: