How To Use Instagram Hashtags 2024 | Ultimate Hashtag Strategy Exposed!

do hashtags actually work how do you find the right hashtags to increase your reach what are banned hashtags while I have a LoveHate relationship with hashtags I am very excited to answer those questions and more right now what's up everyone it's Modern Millie welcome or welcome back to my channel where I post videos every Wednesday teaching you the latest strategies and Trends on social media to help bloggers influencers and content creators grow their brands so give a little love tap on that subscribe button to stay up to date on all the latest tips and tricks that I have for you first I want to say a huge thank you to this video's sh outs I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all of you so if you want to shout out in one of my future videos screenshot yourself watching this video and tag me on Instagram stories or leave a comment below and subscribe to my channel as always time Stamps will be in the comments down below because I value your time and you already know why you're here so let's get into it hashtags can be an amazing tool on Instagram when they are used correctly ever since the US elections hashtags on Instagram just haven't been working the same it feels like creating a successful hashtag strategy is impossible or next to impossible so to help take the stress off your shoulders I am going to teach you what your hashtag strategy should be why should you even use hashtags there are two main reasons that you should use hashtags one of them you probably already know the second one is not talked about enough so number one what you all already know using hashtags can potentially increase your reach each hashtag is an Avenue for people to find your content they're a great way to be found by new people looking or using the hashtag that you're using number two the Lesser known reason is hashtags actually categorize your content so using hashtags basically tells Instagram more about your content and how they can categorize you to push your content to the right people so what is a good hashtag strategy to use then if you're somebody who's done a lot of hashtag research you have probably come across this strategy or strategy similar to this make sure to use all 30 hashtags 10 of them should have less than 50,000 uses another 10 should have less than or between 50 and 100,000 uses and then the last 10 should have under 500,000 uses I feel like there's a lot of strategies out there that that tell you to use a varying amount of hashtags varying the amount of uses the hashtag has now raise your hand if you've heard a strategy like that put those hands up because I hear it everywhere so while these strategies or those numbers that I said that kind of varies depending on where you're seeing this information from there is one factor that is not considered and that factor is how relevant the hashtag is right now because yeah it might have 50,000 uses not too many not too little but is it currently active and that is how relevant is the hashtag right now yeah it might have 50,000 uses not too many not too little but is it currently active where you'll get the reach and activity that you want your strategy should include these two things active hashtags and Niche hashtags before I get into the nitty-gritty breaking down of what that means I need to give credit to my new friends Matthew and Dena founders of hashtags Slayer app no this is not sponsored but I wouldn't be able to make this video if I didn't have the opportunity to pick their brains on this topic almost all of the information that I'm sharing in this video and have shared this far is information that I've learned from them on their Instagram page and in their talks on clubhouse I do currently have an account on hashtags Slayer website that I pay for because I love it so later in this video I'll show you that we'll talk about how their website can help you pick the right hashtags but I wanted to start off by giving credit where it's due so go give them a follow right now they their handle on Instagram is #s Slayer app and remember I am just kind of regurgitating the knowledge that I learned from them so I wanted to make sure to give them credit um you'll see a lot of a lot of really really good stuff on their Instagram probably way deeper and more well explained than this video so give them a follow thing about # groupings as a river the hashtag uses tells you how many boats have gone through the river all time but they don't tell you how quickly the river is moving or how many boats are currently there a quick way to check if the hashtag is a good fit for you is to look at the top nine posts and pay attention to these three things first make sure that your photo has the same feel and Vibes as those top posts second is to average the engagement on those posts so take their all nine posts total number of likes and comments and divide that by nine if your engagement is equal to or higher than that number that is a bullseye hashtag copyrighted saying from hashtags Slayer app I did not make that up okay don't come at me so yes if your engagement is equal to or higher that average engagement it is a bullseye hashtag for you to use the third thing to pay attention to is make sure those top nine posts aren't like months old that might be a sign that the hashtag is not currently being used and is less active therefore you might not get traction using that hashtag now if that sounds like little bit too much work or too much math for you there is a quicker way to find active hashtags and that's to use the hashtag Slayer app the hashtags that they generate for you on their website show you how easy or difficult it would be to rank in the top post um or get a lot of raction if you were to use that hashtag so they rank them by easy to hard for you okay now let's get into the second part of your strategy which is the niche specific hashtags this means that the hashtags that you're using should be very specific to your photo caption profile very specific again another time where niching down is a benefit to you let's just do an example of this if you were to post a picture of yourself in Hawaii and giving like five best tips for Instagram hashtag strategy stay away from irrelevant hashtags like hashtag Monday motivation # boss bab # travel lust one of those might be irrelevant but the other ones while they might be relevant to the post a little bit like travel us boss babe um they're not Niche specific they're not niched down enough to truly help that photo using more Niche specific hashtags you could use # strategy # Instagram tips # Hawaii travel so when you Niche down the hashtags you are niching down on explaining the photo type and the caption what the caption is about and your profile so those are kind of like like the three areas to Niche down and ways to find hashtags okay so like how do you find how do you find the niche hashtags there are few ways to find Niche hashtags and Instagram used to have a really great feature f