That is crazy. I checked it out on a VPN browser and it still came up 8th.
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Haha awesome! I also ran it on my VPS’s and Dedicated Servers and got 4-9th.
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Yep, google seems to like our little community 
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Damn right! Lets keep it up! 1st results HERE WE COME!
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I know you work through your PMs here one after another however I was wondering if you got mine? Sent it like a couple of days ago 
Cheers
Patrick
Hi @BrandonBerner, what is the deadline to check if a hashtag works or not?
Do you expect to get top 9 within the first hour on all 30 (or 25) hashtags?
You should expect to be featured in the Top Post section within the first 6 hours. If it takes longer, you are using hashtags which are either not relevant, or they are to popular for your account at the current state.
I am going to chime in here with experience on using hashtags to try and grow your account.
From what I have seen the impact is minimal. For reference I have an account with just over 1900 followers. I grew it using mostly follow, and some unfollow. I still close to a 1000+ accounts. In terms of engagements, I average about 450 likes within the first 24 hours, and then another 100+ or so over the following few days. My most liked picture is over 600 likes.
With the above, I am able to rank in the top posts for hashtags ranging from 50K to about 500K pretty consistently, in some cases I have hit the top post in 1M+ post hashtags. Finally, I am in the travel niche and I post all my own content, usually two to three times a week.
With all of that, the hashtags bring me under 50 likes and barely 1 or 2 follows each time I post. And these follows are usually from accounts that are doing the follow/unfollow. Essentially the effect of using hashtags and growth on my popularity is close to zero. If I don’t follow, my account stagnates, it is as simple as that. I don’t do huge follows though, I am growing it slowly. The maximum follows I do is 200/day and that is on/off. I net anywhere from 20 to 40 on each follow.
At this point I am unsure at to how to proceed as the only thing that is growing my account is the follows.
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If that works for you then great!
I have experienced the complete opposite of what you explained.
I have many accounts with amazing engagement rates and when I use hashtags they get tons of likes, comments, and followers.
When I stop using hashtags, my account receives 65-90% less engagement.
- You are likely doing something which is limiting your exposure
If you haven’t already, take a look at the topic below
http://mpsocial.com/t/you-are-growing-your-instagram-account-wrong/10239?u=brandonberner&source_topic_id=416But how do you control if the post made it to Top 9 in all 30 hashtags during the whole 6 hours?
You cant control what posts get featured. All you can do is make sure that you are following all the rules in order to be featured.
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Make sure the hashtags are relevant to what you are posting
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Make sure you check the Top 9 Posts of each hashtag and make sure at least 1 picture in there has a similar amount of likes compared to your posted pictures.
Hi @BrandonBerner, I have an account with 94k followers in the travel niche. Being doing F/U for a year, averaging 400 new followers each day.
My engagement although is pretty hurt. It’s been hard to get 3k likes per post, 1k max in the first hour. My engagement went from 10% 6 months ago to 3% now, with tripled amount of followers.
I tried your strategy in the last 3 days, picked 100 hashtags that are less popular (around 100k-150k posts) plus slightly polular ones (200k-400k), doing the 25+5 as you teached. I have reached top 9 posts for at least 24 of the 30 hashtags in all 3 posts.
But the engagement results are worse. Now my posts struggle to reach 600 likes in a hour… and 2k after some days.
What am I doing wrong?
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You did not find the right hashtags. My guess is that the hashtags you researched are to easy to get featured under. Try replacing them with hashtags which are a bit more difficult.
Find hashtags that have featured pictures with 800-1.5k likes and try those.
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Hi BB. Any results in the 60 hashtag hack strategy?
Nothing spectacular. From what I have tested pictures with 60 hashtags and pictures with 30 hashtags seem to get similar to the same engagement.
For accuracy I had 4 accounts in the same niche.
Account #1 = 1k
Account #2 = 1.1k
Account #3 = 143k
Account #4 = 145k
I first needed to get a benchmark. I made all accounts post 5 identical pictures & captions every day at the same time, for 10 days straight, USING 30 HASHTAGS. Each account was using dynamic hashtags with 1,282 researched hashtags. This ensured that each account posting at the same time would not use the same hashtags as the other 4 accounts.
So to summarize each account has a total of 50 posts/account (5posts x 10days). I added all the likes & comments received on the most recent 50 posts for each account. I then calculated the engagement rate on each account.
All accounts had a very slight spike in engagement when using 60 hashtags. HOWEVER I then started using 30 hashtags again and noticed the same slight spike in engagement. This means that the slight spike was not because of the 60 hashtags, but just my account growing each week faster than before.
Im going to be testing this further, but so far it does not look like it makes a difference.
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I can see you’re talking about 30 and 60 hashtags on IG.
I just found this article yesterday of some photographer guy using 30+30 since a long time. ( and explaining his botting IG experience… )
Hope I’m authorized to post links ( else I’m sorry ) :
https://petapixel.com/2017/04/06/spent-two-years-botting-instagram-heres-learned/
Interesting. This post does not have 100 percent relevant hashtags and that gives me more ideas for my account. Great share @BrandonBerner. Your posts and some other forum members add a great value.I learned a lot from reading on this forum. Thanks a bunch!
I tried your method and started adding hashtags to my old post ( I post manually) and did not notice a lift. The new photo, I added last night got traction quickly. I had many likes and was in the featured section for 8-9 low posts hastags (up to 3k). This morning, the photo was shifted from featured to the most recent. Which means nothing else was posted recently after my photo. However, the photo was dropped from featured section.
I started to think, just like is SEO, the more authoritative account that gives a like, the higher the chance for the photo to stay featured. I add a hashtag with my brand name to all my photos and I noticed that when I click on my hashtag, my photos are listed as featured and most recent.The one at the top of the featured is not the one that as the most likes! Does that make sense?
Hi everyone
I’ve read the entire thread and tried implementing the entire strategy. However, I’m not seeing an increase in likes or followers.
Is there a way to figure out what I’m doing wrong?
https://www.instagram.com/monacochanel/ - I’ve been using the hashtag strategy on my last four posts.
I didn’t go through all of your hashtags, but you use one that has a whopping 77 posts, ditch it.
Many of the tags you use are still too big for you. The average likes are well above 1,000.
You need to use lower tags, try them for a week, if they work, keep them, if they don’t, use different ones.
When you start to hit top 9’s with 50% of the tags, then you can start adding in higher level tags. Think of them as a pyramid, Getting featured under one exposes you to X new followers and helps you get likes, getting featured under another does the same, so on and so on. Thats the base of your pyramid.
When the pyramid is high enough, the higher level tags come into play. You can’t go from tags that have 500 likes average to 2,000 likes average tags. Start small grasshopper.
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