Cutting off hashtags

Instagram Marketing
#1

Hello!

I’ve been wondering for the past couple days if completely cutting off hashtags could be a viable strategy in smaller accounts.

It is of my understanding that @Alexnvo has stopped using them and still is getting great reach. What is your opinion?

I mean, if there are no hashtags how can you even get reach outside of your follower base? I can’t hit Explore only within my followers, I need external interactions.

Thank you all – love the community!

1 Like
#2

In the past, I did not need hashtags. I have changed up my tactics for some of my accounts. I am using hashtags on them every post. It is an account by account basis. Some are growing hundreds per day without them some are growing hundreds a day with them. This was done by testing – The reason is the explore feed now is a different beast and rotates accounts to go viral – in the past one could go viral for months on the account. now it lasts a few weeks and gets demoted.

Edit : what I mean by rotates : if you go to your explore page, the top one you see often is in your niche of x account – you will see them for weeks then it changed to another account for weeks and so on. Couple months later the first one shows back up.

1 Like
#3

Interesting experience, I’ll have to start tracking what accounts I find in explore for my personal pages.

I’ve noticed over the past couple months that I ONLY see accounts that are in the 200k+ follower range and maybe 1-2 photos from people who I’ve recently liked that chose not to follow, but that’s it. It’s really discouraging to only get shown these “big” accounts that I have zero interest in. I think it’s based on hashtags in my case, because at the top of my notifications feed it’ll generate that annoying pinned notification “You liked 5 photos with #hashtag” that never goes away, so I’m thinking there’s a direct correlation.

Also, when I keep getting shown these same big accounts, I just block them so I don’t have to see them again. Gotta be an annoying experience for people trying to find new content though…

Actually, I wish there was a way to filter or sort by follower count, I actually prefer finding things from not popular people.

3 Likes
#4

I paid a professional to research hashtags for me. And even he couldn’t figure out what’s going on with my reach. I think I’m about to just give up on hashtags as well and simply post.

#5

Often when the majority does something I do the opposite. With so many abandon hashtags I put in the ones that I think will benefit from less competition. I know the posts are good because all my posts are viral posts from the past 4 years . Do what others don’t do and see the results :pray:

2 Likes
#6

A lot of these “professionals” just use common scrape tools, sort them by numbers and then generate an excel sheet with categories. Anyone could do it, but that doesn’t mean your content will do well with them. It takes more than just dumping tags into a post and praying.

2 Likes
#7

Agreed. But I have a pretty large following so I know my content is well received. And some posts fo viral. I honestly think I’m on the shit list of Instagrams algorithm lol

#8

Ive noticed using hashtags associated with the geo-location you use on the post drives a lot of virality lately.

2 Likes
#9

I use about 60% location based hashtags and my reach is usually 60% from hashtags

1 Like
#10

yup same haha Its definitely pretty new in terms of how its affecting reach

#11

yeah I just used location and hastags on my last personal post.
location didnt bring in too much but hashtags brought in more than my from home.

#12

Could you give an example of “geo location hashtags”? You mean using e.g. #argentina?

#13

From my experience lately i get a lot more Hashtag Reach in General. The Follower Based reach decreases when the Hashtag Reach increases tho.
Did anyone test to cut off hashtags and see if more Followers will see the post?

#14

Yes I found this as well, weather I get 20% hashtag reach or 60% hashtag reach I still get about the same amount of likes.

1 Like
#15

Same experience with me, hashtag reach doesn’t change engagement stats.

I can use zero hashtags, 10,15,30 whatever and likes either come from ~50% non-followers or 100% followers, but the amount never really changes dramatically. Which to me indicates that posts are intentionally being restricted to the same number of users, no matter where they’re seeing the actual content.

Still limited analysis of this, I’ll have to keep comparing and testing but that’s what seems like is happening right now with the algorithm.

2 Likes