Why Your Instagram Hashtags Aren't Working & How To Fix Them

so if hashtags have not been working for you at all on Instagram and you just don't understand the point of trying anymore keep watching in this video we're going to break down why your hashtags are not working the four steps that you can take to make sure you're picking the right hashtags that can increase your chances of reaching more people leading to more likes and more followers and at the end of the video I'll share with you the number one reason why most creators hashtag strategies completely flop as always time stamps are in the description down below because I value your time and your already know why you're here so let's get into it why your hashtags aren't working most people will assume that if their hashtags aren't working for them then the reasonable conclusion is to say well hashtags are dead when in reality it's the expectations that we place on hashtags and the way that we've been trained to use them is what's dead I mean yes there's a lot of reasons why your hashtags might not be working properly and by the end of this video you'll be able to figure out which area you could use some Improv Improvement on but first you need to readjust your expectations of what hashtags actually are used for now in 20124 2025 and so on let's take it back 2016 hashtags on Instagram were the only way users could find photos of similar interest or in the same industry or Niche for example if you're a portrait photographer and want to find other portrait photographers or photos then your only option was to type # portraits or # portrait photography in the search bar on Instagram but it's been 8 years y'all the way that we use hashtags have changed I mean be honest with yourself when was the last time that you opened up Instagram Tik Tok or YouTube and typed a hashtag into the search bar not lately instead what we're doing is just typing words phrases or questions even when asking the head of Instagram Adam misseri himself do hashtags help views this is what he said not really they do help us to understand 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 so what does that mean how does our user behavior in the app change how we fit hashtags into our Instagram strategy what's even the point of using hashtags hashtags are a tool that you can use to help categorize your content to the algorithm when the algorithm better understands how to categorize your content then it can make sure that your content is seen by the right people hashtags are not the solution they're just a piece of the puzzle that will help support your content it takes much more than great hashtags to grow on Instagram nowadays which brings us to the four steps that you can do to pick the right hashtags for your content establish your strategy come up with targeted content ideas create your content with intention and optimize hashtag to work in tandem with your posts I know this might sound a little vague like the whole pick a niche provide value be consistent type of thing but stay with me here let's jump to the Whiteboard and break down these steps a little further so there are two ways that you can complete these four steps that we're going to be going over one is the DIY method so you do it yourself DIY it's a little bit more time consuming but you can do it you can do it the other is automation so using a tool that could help you with with all these steps like SLO I'll explain both options because some of us might not have a budget to invest in a tool right now so that would be the DIY method while some of us do have a budget and we don't really have the time to spend on some of these steps so then I'll go over the automation side so just pick the route that best fits your needs step one establish your strategy first thing you're going to do is get out a piece of paper and write each of these things down we have industry target audience pain points solutions to those pain points 3 to five topics main goal and services Services is kind of optional if you're somebody that offers specific Services you can include this if you don't have any Services right now just completely ignore it let's fill out an example together let's say I'm in the travel industry I'm a little travel bug and the people that I want to reach my target audience dream audience are Solo female Travelers right so when thing about this target audience what is some of their biggest pain points they're probably going to have a few so just write down all of their pain points anything that they're struggling with write it all down brain dump everything that you could think of just for the sake of this example I'm just going to write one thing because space on the Whiteboard but let's say this pain point is they want to travel they want to travel but they're nervous to do it alone so let's write that down and you know what I thought of another one maybe they want to travel and they're nervous to do it alone maybe they also want to travel but they want to save money while doing it so I'm going to say also they want to save money then you're going to brain dump all the solutions to the problems that you've brain dumped and you could get really specific with this so if you're somebody who's in the travel space and you could think of specific examples for how to help somebody who's nervous to travel alone you're like oh they could do this they could plan this they could look this things up like write all the specifics obviously I'm not in the travel industry so I'm just going to say for the solution I can share my tips so that they can feel confident when traveling alone the next thing you're going to brain dump is the your three to five topics that you'll be posting about this is going to help you categorize your hashtags in the future most people will refer to these as content pillars so if you already have your content pillars just write those down if you don't what you could do is read through all of the pain points read through all the solutions and see if you could find a common themes for this example we're going to say my three to five topics are safety moneybudgeting traveling light right you're alone so you probably can't bring a bunch of luggage so how to travel light find transportation and my travels so like my travels my journey my stories Etc let's write those down safety money budgeting traveling light that's not like a oh light it's traveling light transportation and my journey my travels Etc your main goal for Instagram let's say it's growth and then that was great and then if you had Services you would list those there let's say for this example I I don't have any Services I'm just trying to grow on Instagram all of this information that you brain dumped is what you're going to use for the next few steps coming up with content ideas picking hashtags so we're going to come back to this if you want to automate this process and you don't want to journal you don't want a brain dump let's jump to the automated option using SLO if you're somebody who's been subscribe to my channel for a while now you know that whenever I talk about hashtags I also talk about a tool called #s Slayer who actually recently rebranded and are now slay. so so literally if you want go back to any of my YouTube videos on Instagram hashtags I'm recommending them I have always recommended them even though they have never sponsored Ed any of my videos until today I used to be against hashtag tools and quite honestly I still would not recommend just any old hashtag generator hashtag tool to y'all the reason that I stand by slle is because they're the only hashtag tool out there that believes hashtags aren't the make it or rig thing they are not claiming like oh once you figure out hashtags you're going to blow up like no just go to their Instagram page go to their website they're constantly educating content creators how to to create an all-encompassing Instagram strategy that capitalizes on keywords SEO but without the keywords SEO part being super intimidating as you've already learned from this video hashtags are not the make it orri it tool they just help support your current Instagram strategy that's why I love SLO because they teach you the Instagram strategy that will then help set you up for Success when you start using hashtags so let's go over step one establishing your strategy first first you're going to need to create an account right and while you create your account you could use the code Millie to get your first month free when you sign in you're giving SLO all of your information about you your business you as a content creator industry target audience if you offer a service basically everything that we went over on the DIY method you are filling out for them you are also going to connect to your current Instagram account or the Instagram account that you will be using your strategy on because what's really cool is they will scan your account and use the information from your account to help pick out hashtags for you specifically because some hashtags might work better for you when you're under a th000 followers or over a th000 followers so all of that information is important to the hashtag strategy and they will automate it for you so connect to your Instagram they'll scan it for all the important information that they need and it'll give you better results for your overall strategy once your account is created you can also fine-tune your strategy within your account a little bit more so you could plug in things like brand values your brand voice your content pillars other topics that you talk about Etc all of this information is so so so important to plug in so that their AI can help you come up with content ideas and prompts that are in alignment with the information you're feeding it which is going to lead us to step two coming up with targeted content ideas for the DIY method you're going to circle keywords from the information that you wrote down and brain dumped specifically words or phrases that you think your target audience would search for on a search engine or even words in general that you think would capture their attention when they're scrolling on Instagram doing this together obviously my target audience they're going to be attracted to travel they'll probably be attracted to like solo female travel they're probably going to resonate with being nervous saving money Fe feeling confident traveling alone just like that in general or even just feeling confident traveling all of these things safety money traveling light finding transportation is that might not be too captivating but we'll test that probably won't be too much attracted to that but those are all good then what you're going to do is turn these circled words underlined words into a brain dump of content ideas ideas that you think will resonate with that target audience so what I did is I took the circled words that we had over here moved them this way so we have travel solo female nervous save money confidence safety there's a few more but the list would have gotten down there too long and then I turned all of these I used all of these words when coming up with my content ideas so we have three things that helped me feel safe as a solo female traveler this one touches on safety solo female traveler so it touches on a few of these want to travel but nervous to do it alone that's a good hook touches on the nervous touches on travel maybe it even helps them feel confident after watching that video how to save $5,000 when traveling alone so this is about saving money and what you need to know when traveling alone for the first time again that's something that could help build confidence travel solo female so I'm using those words to come come up with really good caption ideas which I'm sure you're like how does this have anything to do with hashtags it will it does it's important follow me along for the ride if you've learned something so far I'd love if you took a moment to give this video a thumbs up this is going to tell YouTube that the video is helpful and hopefully it'll help more people like you find this information a little bit easier and if you've learned two new things and you're not already subscribed to my channel then hug the Subscribe button because it's a simple way to support my business and helps me be able to continue to create free content like this for you now if this is overwhelming or it feels like a lot of work there is the automation option when using SLO based on the information you filled out in step one so target audience industry Etc slay's AI will generate a list of content ideas for you so they are doing the keyword research for you you don't have to do it they've already identified those searchable words and put them into content ideas based on your Instagram account some ideas that their AI generated for me is an educational Carousel for how to boost your content creation uh a real talking about fixing common content creation mistakes another real you could see here it says reach that means like the goal that I selected for increasing reach uh could be a bloopers or even for a story educational story Instagram giveaway so the one that feels most in alignment for me and right now I'm just looking at like the main text is boost your content Creation with these five social media tips I feel like this is good for kind of touches on content creation which is something I talk about social media tips those are the words that I would Circle for my personal brand those are searchable words for my audience and now I want to work on a caption which we'll go over in the next step of course with anyi you're going to use these suggestions as an inspiration Launchpad you're not going to be like oh my gosh wow copy paste B because that's when we all start sound like robots and you're not really able to stand out that way so instead you're going to read through all of those ideas which you can refresh at any time in your account pick one that Sparks inspiration for you and for step three we're going to write out the captions and plug in our keywords a little bit everywhere when I say create your content with intention what I mean is you're using these keywords that you've circled every single step of the way remember these steps that we talking about for this video they're not necessarily to teach you how to make a viral real or viral content that's what this YouTube video is for this step is part of your hashtag strategy for your hashtags to support your content and work together you need to also have a Powerhouse combination of keywords sprinkled into your account and sprinkled in everywhere so where do you put all of these keywords you're going to put all of these keywords into these places your name plate which is the Bold part part of your Instagram bio your regular Instagram bio caption reals audio when you're recording a reel it's what you say popup text so the text that pops up during the Reel or even if you're making carousels the graphics the text that you use in those Graphics so all of those words that you circled you want to put them kind of everywhere on your profile now I could spend the rest of this video talking about a strategy for each of these areas but we're not going to be focusing on that today we're talking about overall # strategy so if you want to break down of like okay well how do I do that I actually have a full video that discusses Instagram SEO and keywords I make it so easy a caveman could do it so if you're somebody who's been intimidated by SEO in the past that video this video right here created just for you now of course there is the Automation Way so the one that I want to write is boost your content Creation with these five social media tips I'm going to select right and it's going to generate my caption again it's scanning all the information that I plugged in into it about me my business and writing a caption that I'm going to use as a creative Launchpad the caption that it wrote for me has a bunch of keywords in it so let's just scan you could see social media tips transform your online presence Stand Out connect with your audience art of Engagement social media success so there's a bunch of keywords here of course it doesn't sound exactly like my brand voice so real quickly I'm going to edit it so what I'm going to do I'm going to scroll down or I'm going to press edit scroll down and then um make some adjustments so I'm going to actually give it some suggestions like hey actually can you rewrite it with this advice select rewrite and the caption that it's going to generate for me will change at any time you can go into your account and refresh ideas so it's generating more ideas for you and if you see one that you like you could save it for later step for optimizing hashtags to work in tandem with your post now you need hashtags to go with with your captions with your post with what you're creating so how do you pick the right hashtags to go with the post that you're creating for that day I'm going to give you three starting points that you can take and run with these are the three starting points that you can take with and run so when you're picking hashtags for a post you should pick hashtags that describe these three things the hashtags could describe the visual elements of the post so if I post a picture of me in Palm Springs for example I would use the hashtag #t Palm Springs or # palm trees because it's that's what you can see in that content then hashtags to describe the topic of that content so while the visual is me and Palm Springs maybe the caption of that post is saying five ways to grow on Instagram right so the topic of that post would be # Instagram growth # Instagram strategy so the topic of the post and then finally your profile you who you are so me # Instagram coach # contentcreator # D so those are the three things that your hashtags should be describing every single time you post your hashtags need to be relevant to the post for that day you don't want to be using the same hashtags over and over and over if it's not relevant to the post that you're creating now if coming up with hashtags for these three things are hard for you to do when you're posting then you know what I'm going to say you can absolutely use an automation tool now we're picking hashtags the great thing about SLO system is that you don't have to do the hashtag research At All by scanning your Instagram and reading the caption that you have typed in there SLO does all of the hashtag research for you just in an instant once you enter your caption you'll get the right hashtags for your post without any effort at all in our last step we picked their idea suggestion we rewrote the caption so that it was in our words and then we pressed save caption so now slle is searching and comparing hasht based off of the information that the caption has in it once it's done as you can see on the bottom here it has all of the hashtags already picked for us so # online creativity # social media tips # social media creativity Etc now when you have a new caption that you're writing I'm going to go here to hashtags I'm going to write my caption so five tips for growing on YouTube get your first 1,000 subscribers I'm going to write my caption here and then based off of the that I'm entering and all the keywords all the things I'm going to press generate it's going to scan connecting Ai and voila scroll down to the bottom you see that the hashtags are different this time because it changed based off the caption we have hasht keyword strategy hasht YouTube strategy hashtag marketing tips so the captions or the hashtags changed based off of the caption that I plugged in now if you want to do more hashtag research that's something you could absolutely do just go to collections slay has a bunch of collections already created for you so they have a library section that you can search for hashtags based off of specific topic so social media manager digital manager content creator I'm going to open this one up and as you could see they already have a list of hashtags and it'll tell you how competitive that hashtag is from low easy to rank in um too high might be a little bit harder to rank in just another tool to show you while we're here is you can search for competitors so if I want to see what hashtags Gary V is using I'm going to plug in Gary ve analyze competitor and hashtag Slayer or SLO is going to generate the hashtags that Gary ve uses and show me which ones I could potentially rank for based off of my specific account so all of the work that we did in the DIY method sceo is actually doing for you if on your profile you selected your goal is growth it's going to seek out hashtags that could help you with growth we said that we're going to pick hashtags based off of visuals topic and your profile that's why you connect your Instagram profile to slio so that it could scan your account and pull those things a little bit easier what's the number one reason why so many people's hashtag strategies flop even if their expectations are set properly and they follow these steps the reason is their content probably sucks I said it let me explain you have a post you use hashtags on the post you post the post and the post doesn't do well you make a new post you use hashtags this time the post does do well you see higher engagement the reach goes up most people's immediate thoughts sometimes are wow I must have used the right hashtags for my post to perform well I'm going to use those hashtags every single time now now when in reality what happened was your content over here was performing well on its own first and because it was performing well and standing on its own then Instagram suggested it to more places like the hashtag page or search and explore your content didn't get improved reach because of the hashtags that you used what caused the post to do well in hashtags was the fact that you had a good post in the first place same thing over here when this post didn't perform well it wasn't because you used the wrong hashtags it's probably because it wasn't a good post it wasn't resonating well with your audience you need to First fix your content before trying to fix your hashtags to put all your success or failure onto the weight of the shoulders of oh it's because of the hashtags is just an outdated approach outdated strategy outdated mindset instead of thinking this posted well or not because of hashtags you want to ask yourself how could you improve the content and the quality of your content you're welcome now if you've made it this far in the video be sure to include the secret Emoji in your comment below and if you have more questions like how many hashtags should you use should hashtags be in the caption or the comments or should you be paying attention to how many people have used a particular hashtag watch this video next where I break down Instagram hashtags even more and thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next one follow your joy bye

Channel: Modern Millie

Views: 93,870

Keywords: instagram tips 2024, instagram hashtag tips, instagram seo strategy, instagram hashtags, social media strategy 2024, instagram hashtag strategy, hashtag strategy 2024, instagram algorithm, instagram seo, tips for content creators, seo optimization for instagram, seo optimization for content 2024, how to do seo for social media, instagram hashtags 2023

Id: R1lmX3Ypa4k

Length: 23min 26sec (1406 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024