Top Instagram Hashtags: How to Find Best IG Hashtags in 2024

Hashtags have never been just a buzzword, for social media marketing, it’s one of the all-time most popular tools to maximize your visibility and reach.

Let’s take a trip down to 2009 when Twitter first introduced hashtags. They were a simple way to categorize content and spark conversations, with a recommended limit of three hashtags per tweet. But then, Instagram stepped into the game later on, turning the hashtag game on its head.

Instagram supercharged hashtags, allowing up to 30 per post. This wasn’t just about grouping conversations anymore–this has been about boosting your post visibility and making your brand go viral among people exploring those hashtags.

Fast forward to 2023, Gitnuxmarketdata reports that 70% of all hashtags are branded, whereas posts with at least one hashtag are 33% more likely to get a comment. Are hashtags still relevant today? you asked, and it’s a ‘YES’ for our answer. 

In this Instagram Hashtags 101 session, we’ll delve into the world of top Instagram hashtags, explore the best strategies to find trending Instagram hashtags which relevant to your business, and guide you on creating engaging and popular hashtags and making them work for you.

Benefits of Using Hashtags for Marketing on Instagram

As we just said, Instagram’s hashtags go beyond just well-organized filing, there are many beneficial usages for enhancing your Instagram marketing strategies. The more you know what hashtags to use on Instagram and adopt them wisely, the more they goe viral. 

Let’s explore 5 benefits of using hashtags for your branded content on Instagram here:

1. Boost Your Brand Discoverability and Reach

Instagram allows users to access the gallery full of relevant posts they’re interested in by just clicking one hashtag. By using hashtags, you’re essentially putting a spotlight on your posts. Whether those users are your followers or not, hashtags can organically help expand your reach and allow you to connect with a wider audience. 

2. Enhanced Engagement and Interaction

People always explore hashtags they’re interested in. In terms of engagement and interaction, hashtags help brands cast a wider net to our target audiences who follow or search for a certain hashtag and are more likely to engage with posts that use it, leading to higher likes, comments, and shares.

3. Showcasing Brand Identity and Personality

The way Instagram allows us to feature up to 30 hashtags per post helps brands showcase their niches to the group of people who are looking for them. At the same time, using branded hashtags consistently can strengthen your brand image and create a community around your brand as well.

For example, if you run a Japanese restaurant in Bangkok, you could use hashtags like #japaneserestaurant, #BKKjapaneserestaurant, or #JapaneseFoodiesBKK to draw attention to your location and offerings.

4. Competitors’ Analysis & Explore Content Ideas

The post gallery in a hashtag, including top post and top recent posts, help us to see the best-performing content in our niches.  By exploring the top posts in a particular hashtag, you can see what’s performing well in your field. This is a great way to keep an eye on your competitors or industry leaders, giving you fresh ideas for your content and helping you identify trending topics for better engagement.

If a high-performing post is from a consumer, it gives you insight into what your target customers find interesting. If it’s a competitor’s post, it’s a benchmark to see what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to adapt their success to your own strategy.

5. Promote Specific Marketing Campaigns

Hashtags can help brand boast their campaigns and aggregate all details of the campaign with the same hashtags into one feed. They raise awareness, collate all related posts, and can even be used as a fun mechanic in competitions or giveaways.

Take Kinder Brueno’s ‘Movie Night Gets Bueno’ campaign as an example. They asked their audience to use the hashtag #RedCarpetReadyContest, resulting in over 514 user-generated posts. It’s a simple yet powerful way to increase engagement and visibility.

How to Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram

How can we know which hashtags are the best to put on our posts?

You probably know the power of hashtags in amplifying your Instagram posts now. However, it’s not as straightforward as just throwing in a few trending ones; some hashtags can be spammy, and misusing them could not only waste your time but also make your brand appear unauthentic or try too hard.

Here we’ll explore effective strategies to find those top-notch trending hashtags that could significantly enhance your social media presence:

1. Utilizing Instagram’s Built-in Search/Suggestions

Instagram’s got you covered when it comes to finding those trending hashtags. Just head on over to the ‘explore page’, an algorithm-driven feature that personalizes and curates content based on who you follow, and how you interact.

It might take a bit of time to dig through post captions or comments for hashtags or descriptions, but it’s a still super accurate way to find high-reached content and hashtags that really match your brand.

Instagram also has a search engine like Google’s, which you can use to search for accounts, locations, audio, and yes, hashtags. One cool thing about Instagram’s search function is that it’s smart enough to show you the most used hashtags first.

Therefore, adopting those high-ranking tags is a good kickstart to give your hashtag strategy on Instagram a major boost.

2. Leveraging Third-Party Hashtag Tracking Tools

Hashtag tracking tools are certainly a game-changer, offering you not only greater ease but also precision. With a hashtag tool, you can gain insights into the effectiveness of popular hashtags that resonate with your audience, as well as monitor the performance of your own branded hashtags. Here are some key metrics these tools can help you track:

• Posts: The number of posts that include your hashtag in their caption or first comment.
• Users: The count of unique users engaging with your hashtag.
• Engagement: The total number of reactions to your hashtag, including likes, comments, shares, clicks, and saves.
• Reach The number of individuals who encounter your hashtag on their feeds.
• Impressions: The amount of time in which your hashtag is viewed.

Moreover, beyond just monitoring hashtags on Instagram, social listening tools like Mandala offer a broad spectrum of capabilities that can enhance your overall digital marketing strategy.

These may include competitor and industry analysis with granular details, identification of trending content across various formats such as photos, videos, and keywords, and even management of all your social media accounts from a single dashboard.

3. Analyzing Competitors and Industry Trends

Always spying on competitors’ social media and industry is one of the best ways to keep your Instagram hashtag strategy fresh. Observe the hashtags they’re utilizing in their posts, identify the common ones, and analyze how they correlate with their content. Then, intelligently incorporate these hashtags into your own posts for enhanced visibility.

At the same time, explore the posts and conversations in the communities that are related to your niches. If you spot a trending pattern, seize the opportunity and make it work for you.

Pro tip: pay attention to industry influencers or Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). They often use simple, yet effective hashtags. 

Guide to Creating Engaging Hashtags and Implementing

When it comes to branded hashtags, the ones specific to your business, the ones that you can fully boast about your branding and offerings, you need to build the hashtag wisely. 

See our guide to craft engaging hashtags for your brand and ways to implement them:

1. Understanding Your Target Audience

Why would you create a hashtag that’s a waste for you and your audience? Lay the foundation for effective branded hashtags by delving into your target audience’s preferences. Understand their desires, interests, the content they connect with, and the language they communicate in.

The better you know your audience, the better your hashtags will be, and good hashtags can help boost engagement and increase your followers on Instagram.

Pro tip: Use the branded hashtag of your business with ones your audience to browse on Instagram to double the visibility. 

For example, if you’re a vegan restaurant targeting health-conscious foodies, you might use hashtags like #VeganEats, #PlantBasedDiet, #HealthyLiving, or #OrganicFood.

These hashtags not only describe your offerings but are also likely to be followed or used by your target audience.

2. Incorporating Relevant Keywords and Topics

Creating a branded hashtag is not just about your business name, and that’s it. Keep in mind that not all potential customers are familiar with your brand and won’t necessarily search for it directly.

Often, they’ll search for what they need or want, and if your business is associated with those keywords, you stand a better chance of being discovered.

Firstly, really get to know your brand––its values, its mission, all that good stuff.  This will help you brainstorm relevant keywords that truly encapsulate your brand. You might find it helpful to use social listening tools to pick up on popular keywords in your industry. 

Here’s an example: Let’s say you own a sustainable clothing brand named “EcoWear”.

Some relevant keywords might be “sustainable”, “eco-friendly”, “green fashion”, etc. A simple, memorable, and specific branded hashtag could be #EcoWearGreenStyle.

Before finalizing, you’d check to ensure this hashtag isn’t widely in use by others. Then, start promoting it by using #EcoWearGreenStyle in your posts and encouraging your customers to do the same when they wear your products.

3. Keeping Hashtags Concise and Easy to Remember

Crafting the perfect branded hashtag is more science than you might think. It’s about balance––making it clear and memorable, without overcomplicating things. So, ditch the jargon and keep your message straightforward.

Size is key here too. A branded hashtag that’s too long will lose impact. Aim for a concise 2-3 words or a short phrase to keep it punchy and memorable.

Imagine you’re a fitness influencer sharing a workout routine. A long hashtag like #DailyFitnessRoutineForWellness could be slimmed down to something like #FitIn15.

It’s short, catchy, and encapsulates the essence of your post. By fine-tuning your hashtags, you can really boost your brand’s online visibility.

Trends in Instagram Hashtag Usage 

Instagram has been constantly adjusting its algorithms, affecting various aspects such as the display of posts on feeds from both users and creators. These adjustments are influenced by factors like the relationship between the creator and the viewer, post-relevancy, and user interests. As a result, there are instances where posts from brands are shown less frequently compared to posts from users in one’s own circle.

And that’s why the use of hashtags remains key to increasing the visibility of posts. 

Recently, Instagram’s official ‘Creator’ accounts have summarized the Do’s and Don’ts for using hashtags in branded content as follows:

Do’s 

• Use the hashtags that are relevant to the theme of your content
• Do check with hashtags your fans already use and follow
• Mix well-known and niche hashtags to broaden your discoverability
• Use specific hashtags so your fans can easily search for your content, or even create your own
• Do keep the number of hashtags between 3-5

Don’ts 

• Use hashtags that have nothing to do with your content (e.g. #explorepage)
• Use overly generic hashtags––these will make it harder for people to discover your content due to the volume of other people using the hashtags
• Use too many hashtags––adding 10 – 20 hashtags will not help you get additional distribution

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Master Your Instagram Marketing

All things considered, hashtags are like the timeless MVPs of Instagram marketing. They’re still here, doing what they do best: boosting your Instagram reach without costing you a cent.

Not only do they make your content more discoverable, but they also give a boost to customer interactions and let you keep tabs on your competitors and what’s hot in your industry.

When it comes to crafting your hashtag strategy, it’s all about balance. You want to blend your own branded hashtag with what’s trending on Instagram. Remember what we mentioned many times above, it should be relevant and memorable, standing out without being too generic.

To start creating effective hashtags and keeping an eye on how they’re doing over the long haul, just like we suggested, we recommend using a social media tool.

These tools can do more than just track hashtags–they can also make your Instagram marketing life easier in various ways. You can manage different branded accounts, keep an eye on your competitors and what’s happening in your industry, and even explore new trends–all from a single dashboard.

If this sounds good to you, click here to learn more details and grab your free trial today.