At the end of March 2022, an announcement by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, caused a strong reaction on the social network. Hashtags on Instagram will have virtually no effect on posts. So should you review your social media strategy?
This news did not go unnoticed, especially by several social network experts such as Matt Navarra or Ellie Mason, expert and Instagram coach. But even though everyone claims that hashtags don’t affect the impression of a post on Instagram, it’s still worth analyzing a lot of data to really see what’s useful.
That’s exactly what SocialInsider proposes after analyzing 75,361,233 publications distributed between March 2021 and March 2022, Goal: To see if hashtags play a role in the number of views of a post, which is calculated as the average engagement rate per impression.
According to Adam Mosseri “not really”.
53% of the respondents said that the main reason for using hashtags on Instagram is to increase the reach and views of the post.
To Adam Mosseri, it’s clear: Hashtags on Instagram do not increase post views on Instagram. they serve categorize content So that users can easily find it. They also help them understand what a post is all about, but it’s not necessarily a strategy to get more views.
This new information, especially when it comes from the head of Instagram, is a game-changer on social media.
While this is understandable to some extent, and since hashtags by definition help to find content and maximize organic searches (especially when a page has a large number of followers), user trends only reflect the actual operation of the algorithm. do not reflect.
You can see that the number of hashtags in a post doesn’t really affect the impressions of the post. The data show no significant difference in the average engagement rate per impression for the analyzed post, regardless of the number of hashtags used.
According to the statistics, there is no significant difference in the average impression rate of a post with respect to hashtag and number of followers.
you should use average 3-4 or 5-6 hashtags To maximize your chances of getting more post views, based on the size of your account,
account with 50,000 to 1 million customers
The only noticeable trend is for accounts with 50,000 to 1 million followers. TookAs they use more hashtags, their impression rate goes down. Best practice for large accounts is to post Instagram content with three-four hashtags so that a . can be obtained Average engagement rate per impression 3.42%.
Accounts with 5,000 to 10,000 followers and between 10,000 and 50,000 followers
For small accounts (5,000 to 10,000 customers)them a. On average, you need to include five to six hashtags in your posts to reach 3.79% average engagement rate per impression, The same is true for medium sized accounts (10,000 to 50,000 customers), that allows them to Impression share of 3.5%.
conclusion
According to this data and experts in the field, hashtags on Instagram don’t really help in increasing the impact of the post. But remember that it all depends on your audience, the type of hashtags you use and the goals you have set for yourself.
best advice to follow Use the right Instagram hashtags for your target audience, so that your messages can be seen by the maximum number of subscribers who are looking for the right topics in the application. So do your research, determine the right hashtags for each of your posts, and use them at the right times to better categorize your posts and help your followers find a specific topic more easily.