How to Research and Find the Best Instagram Hashtags

Any business, company or brand that doesn’t include Instagram marketing in its business growth strategy puts itself at a disadvantage against competitors who know how the social media game works.

As of August 2021, Instagram has monthly active users averaging one billion. Although it’s right behind Facebook (2.89 billion) and YouTube (2 billion) in terms of total active users each month, the brand engagement rates in Instagram are much higher than the two social network giants.

So if you aren’t putting in the same amount effort into Instagram marketing as you do with Facebook, or if you don’t do any form of social media marketing at all, then you’re behind the times and you need to do something about it. Otherwise, the competition will steal all your potential clients.

If you are interested in upping your Instagram game, then read on this because this blog will teach you how to do it through hashtags. We will briefly explain what Instagram hashtags are, why they are so important, and then we will teach you ways to research and find best hashtags for your Instagram posts.

Instagram hashtags are words or multi-word phrases preceded by the hashtag, or pound, symbol (#).

They are added to Instagram posts to categorise the content and make it more searchable for other users.

For example, if the official Instagram account of Adidas makes a post about their latest release in the running shoe category, their post will typically have the #adidasRunning hashtag somewhere in its content (usually at the end).



If you regularly use social media, chances are that you’ve probably used hashtags on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Good content is such a waste if don’t maximise its discoverability to the users in the platform, and Instagram hashtags help increase the exposure and discovery of your posts.

Aside from that, Instagram posts with hashtags also have a higher engagement rate than those without.



Moreover, hashtags can help you come up with a winning content strategy on Instagram through competitor analysis and hashtag research.

Simply put, your Instagram campaigns will be more effective if you use hashtags on your posts. 

There are many ways to research Instagram hashtags. Here are 5 methods that will help you find the best ones:

Knowing who your target audience is is essential for finding the best hashtags for your Instagram posts. By knowing your audience, you will understand several things about them, such as what hashtags they use and how they search for them. Sift through all the hashtags and use the ones that are relevant to your business, company, or brand. It’s important to remember that the hashtags you use must contain key search terms that your audience is actually searching for.

Instagram’s search tool allows you to see the popularity of each hashtag, the hashtags that are related to each hashtag, and the hashtags that the people you follow also follow. This gives you the information you need to determine which hashtags are worth using. Using the search tool is also an easy way to find which hashtags are relevant to you, as the results will show the top hashtags that are related to the one you typed in.

Like keyword research tools for SEO, hashtag research tools for social networks are a thing. Although it’s possible to find winning hashtags without a tool, using a combination of manual research techniques and a hashtag research tool will help you craft a solid social media marketing strategy.

There are heaps of Instagram hashtag research tools on the web. Some are free, while others require users to make a payment. Obviously the paid tools are usually the ones that offer more advanced features like analytics, so it ultimately depends if you’re willing to spend a few extra bucks each month to bolster your Instagram success.



Thankfully, most of the best paid hashtag research tools offer a free trial so that you can check whether you like using it or not. As for which one is the best, it really depends on your needs. Personally, we use a combination of RiteTag (it is free) and Keyword.io (free version available) when researching hashtags for our social media clients because its powerful features, like the hashtag suggestions for texts and images. Other amazing hashtag research tools include Hashtagify, Sprout Social, Agorapulse, Brand24 and Hootsuite.

Find the Instagram accounts of successful companies in the same industry and carefully analyse their usage of hashtags. Copy the hashtags from their best-performing posts and apply them to your own campaign. Make sure that the company you’re looking at is identical to yours in the sense that they have similar products, services, or target audiences, because sometimes a company can be in the same network as you but have different offerings and audiences.

Perform a quick Google search to find keywords and search terms that may be relevant to your own hashtag. Simply type your hashtag/s (without the # symbol) and hit the search button. Go through the results and look for potential keywords or search terms that you can use as a hashtag for Instagram. Check the search volume of the hashtag using Instagram’s search tool to determine if it’s worth using. If it is popular or has a decent search volume, use it on your own posts. If the hashtag has a low search volume, you can still leverage it as a niche hashtag to reach more people from your target audience.

Instagram marketing is one of the best ways to grow your business, mainly because it beats out other social media platforms in terms of user engagement rates. In order for your Instagram marketing campaigns to succeed, you need to make sure that you use the best available hashtags on your posts, which you can find using the techniques we mentioned above. Use all of them together so that you can craft an Instagram marketing strategy that slays your competition.

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