The world of social media is an ever-evolving space, with new updates to keep up to date with all the time.
The thing with all these updates though…
Is learning how to use them to your advantage, how to add them to your existing social media strategy.
The key?
Research what different brands are doing and how it's working for them. Then work out how your brand can enhance its social strat to implement these new changes.
These updates and changes whilst some of them can be difficult to navigate, like updates in algorithms.
Social media platforms, and in particular Instagram often is adding updates to enhance the navigation and UX of the platform.
So let’s dive into what some of these updates could mean for your Instagram strategy;
So what’s the latest with the Instagram Hashtag?
By now you will already know that Instagram is a firm favourite of the social media platforms on offer for me.
So keeping up to date with all the latest updates is key to making sure your strategy is always evolving as Instagram does.
You can now add #hashtags and @mentions right within your bio, while this may not be breaking news to you.
You may be wondering how this could form a part of your Instagram Strategy.
So were we. So we did a little reading.
Hashtag and Profile Links (In Your Bio) Why?
We are all wanting to grow the organic reach of our treasured Insta profiles.
Adding relevant appropriate hashtags to your profile creates the opportunity for a wider audience reach.
A wider audience reach means that more eyes will potentially fall on our content, more eyes on our content means the potential to capture more leads than before.
Sounds pretty epic to me.
Why wouldn’t you want the potential for more eyes on your profile?
Follow that hashtag
Instagram recently added the “follow a hashtag” feature. This means that you can follow a variety of different hashtags in exactly the same way that you would a normal profile.
The hashtags that you choose to follow will pop up within your newsfeed in the same way a normal profile would. The followed hashtags will feature the top posts relating to that particular hashtag as well as any popular Insta stories for that hashtag.
Allowing the user (you, me or our persona) the opportunity to see more content than what was available before this new feature.
In following relevant, industry specific hashtags you open yourself up to discovering new profiles or accounts that could turn into a potential lead for your business.
I recently read that many brands are also following their own branded hashtags. Why? This gives your brand the opportunity to track whoever uses your hashtag. This gives your brand the opportunity to connect with these people and build relationships with them in quite a unique and personal way.
More about branded hashtags here.
The Hashtag and Insta Stories
If you are an avid Insta user, then you will not be surprised that adding Hashtags to your stories is yet another great way of getting your content out there for the world to see.
The hashtags used within an Instagram story are searchable.
There’s a catch though…
The hashtags you use in your story will likely only be found if your account and the hashtags you have chosen are popular enough.
Don’t fret though, this gives us some cool KPI’s to aim for #challengeaccepted.
Cool story tip:
Stories form a part of the latest update in the Instagram algorithm. This means that any engagement sent or received from within a story is accounted for by the algorithm and more likely to show up in the search feed.
An Instagram Hashtag Top Tip
We’ve mentioned it before, but we shall mention it again.
Using the same hashtags over and over again, is not worth it.
Why?
It’s viewed as spammy by Instagram’s algorithm and can affect the reach of your insta post.
Rather create a list of hashtags that aligns with your brand, place them in a Google Sheet for organisation and easy access.
Then select the most relevant ones based on your Instagram post for that day.
This also gives your brand a variety of hashtags to play around with, making the aspect of A/B testing a little easier.
The proverbial world of Instagram hashtags is your oyster, so dive into that world.
So what are the key Instagram hashtag #takeaways
In the content marketing world, we are constantly looking for new ways to distribute content and extend our organic reach and audience.
These Instagram hashtag updates allow us to do just this.
It allows us to find and get found, it allows reach of a far wider audience than before, it allows us to connect with our persona in a far more contextual and personalised way.
So do consider the multitude of applications that the new Instagram hashtags features can offer us.
Take a squiz at our Insta profile here, we know it needs work, but this excites us
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