If you are here, you may feel that your hashtag strategy is not giving you the expected results. We understand that at this point, you may feel frustrated and ready to give up, but hold that thought! Our team gets daily questions from prospects clients such as:
- What is my company doing wrong?
- Why aren’t my hashtags working?
- Why do my hashtags work well sometimes but not other times?
Do you feel identified with any of these concerns? AlphaCrew Studio is here to answer your doubts. Today, We will show you 4 hashtag mistakes that are hurting your growth. The good thing is that they can be avoided, and you can optimize your account and business strategy!
Mistake # 1: Your Hashtags are not matching your actual content.
So your hashtag strategy may be on point, and your captions super helpful, but you are still not seeing the results? It is time to audit your account. Instagram is one of the most visual social platforms in the online space right now; this means that users are moved by images first.
Put yourself in the shoes of the user for a moment. If you are looking for hashtags, let’s say, for example, for beauty brands, and in the results, you see a car, would you click on that picture? The same exact principle applies to your brand.
What does your business do? Are you pushing your personal brand? It doesn’t matter what your answer is; you need to make sure that your content is in harmony with what you do and with your goals.
For a more graphical example, let’s think about YouTube; thumbnails are a significant determinant factor for you to either click on the video or not. It needs to be attractive and show you in one image what the video is about. The same goes for Instagram! Start thinking of your posts as thumbnails for your hashtags and make sure they match accordingly.
Pro-Tip: How to quickly audit your account?
Are you still unsure if your account is sharing the right content for your business? Go to your Instagram right now and cover the top part of your screen so that only your pictures or posts can be seen.
Imagine that you are a prospective consumer or just a stranger coming in contact with your brand for the first time. Only by looking at your feed would you be able to tell what your business is all about? If the answer is not, it is time to take action and start changing your strategy.
Make sure that new users can see the value they will be getting by following your account just by the first look. Every element needs to work in harmony, profile information, content, captions, and hashtags.
Mistake # 2: You are not sufficiently diversifying your hashtags
We understand that the idea of creating content to activate your brand on SEO-friendly
What do we mean by this? If you are serious about your hashtag strategy, you know that it is more than just typing some keywords. Just like in other social media platforms, the most popular keywords will be in high demand, and that means that your fantastic post may be pushed all the way to the bottom by the other millions of posts using the same hashtag every minute. Even worse, you may not be hitting those keywords that users are looking for on the platform.
You need to put some time into analyzing the right hashtags to use that will actually give you results and help you expand your reach. By diversifying your hashtags, you will also make sure that even if some fail, the other ones will come to the rescue.
Even if you have already done some research and are working with the right size hashtags, don’t forget that you also need to diversify your hashtag groups. Don’t put all of your efforts into just one group of proper keywords. Also, by re-using a hashtag group too much, you will risk your Instagram account being considered spam.
Make sure you create various equally efficient groups and alternate them, do not only go for the popular hashtags!
Bonus -Tip: How to avoid Instagram’s radar
Bots tend to use the 30 hashtag limit and repeat them regularly. To avoid Instagram confusing your account with a fraudulent bot, make sure that you are not overusing your hashtags and limit yourself to 25 or less. Keep diversifying them by rotating your hashtag groups often.
Mistake # 3: You are duplicating the hashtags of other accounts.
We can’t say this enough; every account is different and needs its own personal strategy. If you are looking at other accounts for inspiration, be careful about using their hashtags. You don’t know why that specific account uses those hashtags or what the company’s goals are. They may or not work for you.
Taking the easy way out has never been the answer for successful entrepreneurs and content creators. If you really want to increase your reach and grow your audience, you need to be willing to put in the effort.
Copying hashtags is definitely a big NO when it comes to hashtag strategies. By just copying the hashtags from other Instagram accounts, you are putting your own account at risk. What if you are actually just duplicating a terrible strategy?
Mistake # 4: Your account is not optimized.
You can’t just rely on hashtags alone and expect massive results. If your account is not optimized, and by this, we mean:
- Valuable and valuable content.
- Quality pictures.
- Well-written captions and bio.
Then, even if you have the best hashtag strategy, you will neither obtain more followers nor gain more sales through Instagram. With this said, using hashtags is still better than not using them at all. If they are applied along with a good content strategy, they can definitely deliver excellent results. You just need to be willing to work on quality content and spend time researching the right keywords to boost your Instagram account.
