Perfect reply. This was exactly what I was going to say.
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This is what Instagram looks for in order to feature your picture in the top posts:
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Steady increase in daily followers
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Steady increase in daily likes / views
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Steady increase in daily comments
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Uniqueness in hashtags
Rotating hashtags will acheive this -
Steady amount of likes from specific hashtags
You will notice your picture will rarely (if ever) get featured under un-related hashtags when used in your caption. This is because Instagram will only feature your picture under specific hashtags that resulted in your picture gaining more likes. This helps keep the top posts relate to the specific hashtag
Instagram used to rank just based on likes, but to many people just purchased likes to get their pictures featured. Now they make it harder to manipulate.
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News from the Instagram team about the hashtag issue (guess it’s about the so called shadow-ban, that actually is an algorithm issue).
They basically admit there’s a problem they are trying to fix. They say you should develop a strategy with no hashtags (I do not understand how to be found by new users without the use of hashtags). And ultimately they say " At the moment, we don’t have the available resources to fix the hashtag issue. We really appreciate your understanding and patience in this matter. "
Interesting how a billion dollar company says it doesn’t have the resources to fix a major problem.
At least they spoke publicly about it, after months of user reports asking to fix the issue…
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Facebook is too focused on the failings of Oculus, and busy covering up the fake news algorithm to put their Instagram team to work as they probably shifted all the resources to the former.
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it would be an interessting strategy to test ! now i have another view on hashtags utility
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There is an Hashtag Problem
http://mpsocial.com/t/instagram-admitting-there-is-an-hashtag-issue/6780
Thanks for sharing this!
Its true, there is no ethical way of gaining followers other than to use hashtags.
There are other methods such as following/unfollowing however they obviously do not like users who follow thousands each day (they will ban you), so how the hell are we to grow our accounts then!
I think they are wanting to (non-directly) force business to pay for IG advertising since they are unable to promote them self using any ethical way.
They can easily fix this problem if they chose to, however they are making a killing when selling advertising, so there is no motivation for them to fix it.
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Just wanted to give an update here on using the hashtag strategy of @BrandonBerner. I am not sure how/if the hashtag issue atm is affecting my posts but here are the results from the last 2 days. Just to give some background into my IG acc has 6.5k followers. I was too lazy to do the hashtag research myself but Mr Berner did an awesome job!
I have used this hashtag strategy as outlined in the post, put them into dynamic hashtags and |COMMENT|. My last 2 posts on IG. Here are the stats from one of the posts:
19 - Top post
11 - Top 9 posts
1 - not top 9/top
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I am so happy to hear the hashtags I provided are getting your pictures featured under the Top Post section under lots of the hashtags.
It was a pleasure to do business with you @Mojo 
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I can confirm this.
Even after 24 hrs, if one of your post is ranked #1 in some hashtags, your new post won’t make it.
That’s something that MP should look into. ie: If you have 100 dynamic hashtags, use 30 different from the previous post.
I see this in 1/post day accounts as well as 5/posts per day accounts. So obviously it would help a lot of people posting 1 or even more posts daily so each of them target different hashtags.
I’ve heard that with recent changes at Instagram, you can only include 20 hashtags now. Have you heard this?
Also, would it be just as effective to put the hashtags in a comment rather than in the post itself?
Great article, thanks for the advice!
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I also read in the Gramous forum that you can unfollow (let’s say 400) each day in the morning, and then follow 400 more in the afternoon which should keep your account growing assuming you are liking and engaging those accounts you follow (enable liking posts of your recent followers is a good start)
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Logically this would make sense, I would assume, if the number of total account actions is below the ‘threshold’ that’s considered abusive… also assuming you’re not unfollowing / following the same accounts within the same day.
This is not the case with @Mojo. She was able to post 2 pictures within a few hours from each other. Both pictures were posted in the Top Post of may of the hashtags added into the caption. Each post contained a different set of hashtags (Dynamic Hashtags)
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@jondigo Yep 100% true! And heres the best part…the post from yesterday now even older than 24 hours is still featuring in the top hashtags. Infact both posts both older than 24 hrs are still in the top 9 posts. Also both my new posts from today also both made it into the top 9 posts. I am going to hashtag my way to heaven 
.
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I meant you can’t get another post in the same hashtags. If she used two different set of hashtags, sure she can.
Actually it happens (sometimes) that you end up with 2 captions from the same account in the same hashtags, but it’s really because it’s crushing up the previous one or it has been there for 1+ day (in smaller hashtags)
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I honestly only seen that in low volume hashtags.
I also have 2-3 posts in the same hashtags after 24 hours, but it’s not very active hashtags.
Simply put: IG’s algorithm will give XYZ priority to all other people having the similar number of likes before your second caption gets in there. It’s just logic though.
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Ok I now understand what you are saying.
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If I post Picture #1 with hashtag #1 - It CAN get featured
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If I post Picture #2 with hashtag #1 in the same day - It CANT get featured.
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If I post Picture #2 with hashtag #2 in the same day - It CAN get featured
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If I post picture #2 with hashtag #1 after 24 hours - It CAN get featured
Thanks for the clarification.
So simply put, rotate your hashtags with every post so they are all unique. That way you make sure to get featured with every post.
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in that sense, we need a library of more than 100 hashtags to rotate well, and to use different ones at various stages of growth
Exactly
You dont need to worry about this since you ordered the Hashtag Research Service from me. I will already be providing you with hundreds of hashtags that are low competition so you can get features in almost all of them.
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