Here is a list of guidelines to use when working with Instagram's algorithm:
1. Embrace Instagram’s Latest Features
- Instagram will always give their latest features (such as Instagram Reels) a helping hand to help drive adoption, so it’s a good idea to jump on the latest trends and take advantage of this extra boost.
2. Encourage More Interactions with Instagram Stories Stickers
- Instagram Stories stickers are a great way to encourage audience engagement — and the more engagement your posts get, the higher they’ll be boosted by the Instagram algorithm. There are lots of Instagram stickers, but the best ones for driving engagement are the poll, emoji slider, and question stickers.
3. Drive Conversations with Engaging Captions and Comments
- Instagram has confirmed comments are super important when it comes to feed ranking — so it’s a great idea to encourage as many as possible for your posts. One of the best ways to do this is by writing good captions that drive engagement, including a call-to-action in your Instagram caption (E.g. Share this post to inform other people; tell us what you think in the comment box below, tell us if you need more information, etc)
Optimize Your Hashtag Strategy
What are Instagram hashtags? A hashtag is a combination of letters, numbers, and/or emoji preceded by the # symbol (e.g., #NoFilter). They are used to categorize content and make it more discoverable. Hashtags are clickable. Anyone who clicks on an Instagram hashtag or conducts an Instagram hashtag search will see a page showing all the posts tagged with that hashtag.
| Why Use Instagram hashtags? |
- Hashtags are an important way to expand your Instagram audience. When you use a hashtag, your post will appear on the page for that hashtag. If you use a hashtag on your Story, it could be included in the relevant hashtag Story, which also appears on the hashtag page.
- People can also choose to follow hashtags, which means they could see your hashtagged post in their feed even if they don’t follow you (yet).
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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!
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| How Many Hashtags on Instagram to Use: |
- You can include up to 30 hashtags on a regular post, and up to 10 hashtags on a Story. If you try to include more, your comment or caption won’t post.
- That said, just because you can use that many hashtags for Instagram doesn’t mean you should. There’s no right number of hashtags for every business, or even for every post by the same business.
- The consensus is that about 11 hashtags is a good number to start with. But the most common number of hashtags to use on Instagram is between 1 and 3.
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| How to Hide Instagram Hashtags in a Comment: |
- Write your caption as usual but don’t include any hashtags.
- Once your post is published, simply click the speech bubble icon under your post to leave a comment.
- Write out or paste the hashtags you want to include in the comment box and tap Post.
- On mobile, your hashtags won’t be visible unless a user taps View all comments. However, on desktop, your comment will remain in the top position, so this trick works better if you’re targeting a mobile audience.
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| How to Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram: |
- Unlike Twitter, Instagram doesn’t publicize a list of trending hashtags. However, if you search for a hashtag on Instagram, you’ll see how many posts use that hashtag. You’ll also see a list of other popular Instagram hashtags using similar words, with post counts included too.
- To search for a hashtag on desktop, enter the hashtag including the # symbol into the search box. On mobile, enter your search term in the search box, then tap Tags.
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