Hashtag is a keyword on Instagram, which is highlighted with a “#” sign. It is clickable: when you click on this word, the social network shows all posts with it. Therefore, using hashtags on the account, categories are distinguished, contests are labeled and subscribers are attracted. Basically, accounts are promoted by medium and low frequency hashtags. How to work with them – in this material.
What are low-frequency hashtags on Instagram
Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post. Hashtags can be both in Russian and in English (or any other language). They can be placed both inside the post and in the comment or at the end (“footer”) of the text. Most often, hashtags are added in the “footer” or in the comments.
Important: Choose hashtags on the topic of the post, not everything. This will make it easier for the subscriber to find your content. We have already talked about how to make expert posts, and you can read about storytelling in a separate article on the blog.
There are several types of hashtags on Instagram:
- high-frequency (from 100-500 thousand publications),
- medium-frequency (from 50 to 100 thousand publications),
- low-frequency (up to 15-50 thousand publications).
Also, hashtags are divided into two types: commercial, which help to sell a product or service, and general, where there is no purpose to sell something.
Let’s analyze the frequency. Frequency shows the popularity of a hashtag, i.e. the number of posts on Instagram with it. For example, #auto is a high-frequency hashtag, with almost 8 million posts made with it. It is not commercial, since, according to its wording, it is a general word by which it is unlikely that they will search for services or a product. The following tags can also be classified as non-commercial: # instagram, # love, # selfie, # russia, # photos and others. There are also branded, personal, competition and geo-hashtags, but in this article we will cover them in passing.
For more information on the different types and types of hashtags (as well as what you can’t use), see How it works: Instagram hashtags 2020.
What are low-frequency hashtags for Instagram?
Commercial inquiries are concentrated mainly in medium and low frequency hashtags. For example, #car rental is a commercial mid-range hashtag. With him “only” 65 thousand posts. This is a target tag – that is, a person who searches for information on it on a social network is most likely interested in a car rental. A non-commercial mid-range hashtag is, for example, #myauto.
If you make the commercial hashtag more specific (make a “long tail”), then you can go to the low-frequency one – the # car rental company has a little more than 3.5 thousand publications and it is more specific and selling.
By the way, if you add a city, street or location to the mid-frequency hashtags, you can get a low-frequency one. For example, car rental is provided only in Alma-Ata, which means that a business on Instagram can publish posts with the hashtag #car rental in order to find people who are looking for a service in this city.
Low-frequency hashtags on Instagram are keywords that reflect a specific query and often have a long tail. They can be commercial or general. They are needed in order for the audience to find answers to their request on the social network.
How to work with low-frequency hashtags on Instagram
A post without a hashtag will only be seen by account subscribers. Therefore, all types are often used for promotion: high-frequency, mid-frequency and low-frequency. That is, a post with a car rental in Kazakhstan may contain: # auto, # car # car rental, # car rental, # car rental service. A high-frequency tag is needed for reach, and a mid- and low-frequency tag is needed to attract leads or buyers.
Why you shouldn’t publish only in high-frequency hashtags:
- Often they are “trash” – millions of various posts appear under it, and not even always on the topic.
- They do not contain a specific request and do not solve the user’s problem.
- It is difficult to compete with hashtags with over 100,000 publications. New posts will quickly go down and the audience simply won’t see them.
To test the effectiveness of hashtags, we conducted an experiment: we prepared three posts about a trip to Vladimir on a new Instagram account. Published using SMMplanner. In the first post, we used common high-frequency hashtags: #vladimir, #autumn, #height, and so on. For them, the post received 4 impressions in the feed. The second one contained only low-frequency hashtags: # park in the city, # walk in the park, # rest, vanity and others. There were no hits by hashtags at all. Well, and in the third, all types of hashtags were combined: half – high-frequency and mid-frequency, and the rest – low: # travel, # city streets, # red brick. Bottom line: one show. The tags were not commercial.
Let’s see how things are going on a commercial account: it has almost a thousand subscribers and the average number of likes per post is around 50-60. Hashtags are added with 30 comments, posts are published every day. The bulk of the tags are commercial mid and low frequency tags.
Clicks on such hashtags give 32-46% additional percent to the post’s reach. Selected on the topic of the post at the time of publication. For more information on how to increase the reach of your posts, see the article “How to increase the reach on Instagram?”
How to find low-frequency hashtags on Instagram
One of the easiest ways to find hashtags is to use Instagram. Type in the tag of interest in the search and the social network will show all similar ones. When writing a post (or comment), a list will also be provided. It will be possible to estimate the frequency of the hashtag.
If posts come out through deferred posting, then you can create a spreadsheet in Excel or Google and add 30-60 tags by subject and frequency. Online services will help you find tags:
- Tagsfinder – will select a recommended set of 30 hashtags by keyword.
- Displaypurposes – will help you find analogues of a hashtag on demand.
- Instatag is a thematic database of hashtags.
These services come in handy if ideas are finished. We recommend that you search for low-frequency tags manually – this way you have a higher chance of finding something interesting.
Additional tips for working with low-frequency hashtags
Don’t blindly copy hashtag lists into your posts. First, the repetition of tags from post to post can be regarded by Instagram algorithms as content spam, and this is a chance to get a “shadow ban”. Secondly, low-frequency hashtags need to be put in meaning. It’s weird to use the same set for sales, entertainment, or informational publications.
It should also be remembered that # buy a car # perm and # buy a car are different hashtags. The first is a pair of high-frequency non-commercial query tags, and the second is a local woofer. Naturally, their purpose and effectiveness will be different.
When choosing a hashtag, it is worth starting from the actions of a potential subscriber. Ilya Slyusarev talks about this in his article, who tried promotion through different types of tags and came to the conclusion that only highly specialized hashtags are more effective: “Before using hashtags, you need to understand the purpose. Instead of finding magic hashtags that will bring me clients, I’d rather spend 10,000 rubles on advertising. “
Conclusion
Low-frequency (and any other) hashtags are not a panacea. Using them will not give thousands of coverage and dozens of new clients by default. Our experiment showed that Instagram algorithms rank posts not by the presence of the necessary keywords in the post text, but by audience engagement. Low-frequency users are needed, in theory, to attract niche commercial traffic to an account. We encourage you to experiment with them and share your result with them. Comments are always open 🙂