Are Instagram Hashtags Dead In 2024? | Are Hashtags Still Relevant? What Is The Best Strategy?

hashtags on instagram have changed and evolved so much in the past few years which means the hashtag strategy you're currently using is probably outdated if you're looking for a brand spanking new strategy for 2022 you've come to the right place because in this video i'll be answering frequently asked questions like are hashtags dead do we even need to use them moving forward and even the practical how many hashtags should you use when you post should you put them in the captions or the comments all of that will be answered in today's video what's up friends i'm milly i'm an influencer coach and welcome back to basically my netflix show where you get weekly videos from me every wednesday teaching you the latest strategies for how to grow your brand business and social media as an aspiring influencer and every sunday where i take you behind the scenes of what it's like to actually run a business as a youtuber and influencer myself as always timestamps and resources will be in the description down below because i value your time and you already know where you're here so let's get into it okay so i feel like for you to really understand how outdated your strategy might be we need to go back in time a little bit i did some digging on google to find some of the most popular hashtag articles in 2016 to see what was being taught back in the day and came across this article hashtags are essentially a way to tag your photo and throw into a chronological pool of other photos and videos that have used the same tag this allows other users to find photos of similar interests or in the same niche for example if you're a photographer and want to find other portrait photographers or photos then the portrait hashtag should have photos of portraits that other users have tagged with their images so this is important to remember hashtags were originally created for photographers to find other content photographers get photo inspiration and make connections and it worked for exactly that back then but then cue the influencers businesses and entrepreneurs into the chat that strategy slowly but surely stopped working leading us to today or more recently april of 2022 head of instagram adam asari went to his stories to answer the question do hashtags help views this is what he said not really they do help us to understand what a post is about which means it might be more likely to show up in a place like a hashtag page for instance but in general no i wouldn't try to think of hashtags as a way to get more distribution basically he says not really he wouldn't try to use hashtags as a strategy or way to get more distribution we were taught through the ultimate game of telephone that the right hashtags or combination of hashtags will expose your brand to large and targeted audiences which is just not how it works anymore there's a new sheriff in town y'all and the laws are different so to answer the question are hashtags dead the answer no but the way we've been using them is dead now maybe you're wondering if hashtags don't help with getting more views then why use hashtags at all well really you don't have to use hashtags at all if you're not aware instagram has started to expand into more seo practices this means they're making their platform a little bit more search friendly similar to youtube and tick tock where you can look up a key phrase on their search and explore pages and any post using those keywords or key phrases will appear in results i'm a huge fan of utilizing seo strategies on your instagram because that's what i teach and i have seen students who have seen tremendous results utilizing seo alone so if you're interested in adapting seo into your instagram strategy i do have a full video here i know the term seo is a little bit scary but don't worry i break it down really digestible into actionable steps that you could take today so you don't have to use hashtags but they do still work in the way that they say they do nowadays hashtags are a tool that you can use to categorize your content to the algorithm why do you want to categorize your content this is one of the way instagram is able to better connect users with what they're looking for remember adversary didn't say hashtags are pointless never use them no he said they do help us understand what a post is about which means it might be more likely to show up in places like hashtag page okay i kind of feel like i'm explaining things but i want to break it down how hashtags work you have this post you use hashtags and it doesn't perform well maybe it gets poor engagement maybe zero reach so you're like okay let me try it again new post you use hashtags and this time it does perform well or the engagement is higher the reach goes up most people's immediate thoughts here are oh i used the right hashtags this time that's why my post performed well when in reality it's because my content was performing well on its own then instagram started to suggest it and push it to places like the hashtag page your content didn't get improved reach because of the hashtags you used what caused the post to perform well in those hashtags was the fact that that content was great content so if your goal is to rank higher in feed explore or search results your goal should be to create quality content i mean this goes back to instagram growth 101 literally an instagram help desk when you look up how to grow on instagram their literal answer is to create quality content that people want to see in their feed and then if you do that then it's more likely that you'll be pushed to places like search and explore quick shameless plug if your goal is instagram growth i have a free downloadable that teaches you the five steps i took to get 10 000 followers in 30 days on instagram so yeah if you like free goodness that's for you so we've talked about multiple sources of adam asari instagram help desk and if that's not enough proof for you remember the post that instagram creator account posted on september 27 2001 talking about the hashtag best practices remember that post we've talked about it here on my channel they talk about the do's and don'ts and the last slide says things to keep in mind about hashtags are the content itself and the way people interact with it can affect distribution more than hashtags and think of hashtags as a tool that provides context about your post and supports delivering content to people who are interested in a particular topic okay so what should your hashtag strategy be step one i want to challenge you to think less about hashtags spend less time on hashtag research and more time on creating the best possible content for your followers when you feel like your content is like thebomb.com then you can start implementing the next steps step 2 find and use relevant hashtags we've heard a few times already that your hashtags should be relevant and they should describe the content that you're posting when i'm thinking of hashtags to