How To Find The Most Popular And Trending Hashtags on Instagram
Hashtags on Instagram are super powerful for building your account and reaching new audiences
Not only does hashtags let you reach new audiences, but they also help you reach the right audience. Which is super valuable for any brand on social media.
By implementing well-thought hashtags into your posting, you’re vastly increasing your reach, and you can be sure to grow your page even faster than you are at the moment.
For some, though, hashtags are a bit controversial.
Under certain circumstances, hashtags might be seen as spammy and bot-like, but hashtags are far from dedicated to bots. The reality is that only a small fraction of those who are using hashtags on Instagram are bots.
Here comes the “But”…
There are a few hashtags that are considered to be “bot” hashtags and very spammy. The thing with these hashtags is that they often are super crowded, which means that a lot of people are using them. However, as long as you don’t use these bot-hashtags, you’ll be fine.
Let me explain…
First of all, for the bots to reach people, they need to have a strategy. And because bots get deleted so quickly, they don’t have time to build their page slow and steady, and instead, use hashtags that have a lot of traction.
But the hashtags that have a lot of traction are often very broad, and very bad at reaching your target audience.
That’s not all…
The biggest issue is that with the “bot hashtags”, there are bots who are spamming people who are using those hashtags. So by using a “bot hashtag”, you might fall for the misconception that those hashtags help you, but the reality is that the only people who engaged with your page as a result of the hashtag were bots.
Some examples of hashtags that bots are targeting are:
- #Like4like
- #Followme
- #Follow
and so on…
Now that you got some background information, let’s learn How To Find The Most Popular And Trending Hashtags on Instagram, while taking bot hashtags out of the equation.
How To Find The Most Popular And Trending Hashtags on Instagram
Okay, to begin with, finding the most popular hashtags on Instagram isn’t a difficult task. Best of all is that those hashtags don’t change position too often, so the list below should be fairly accurate for some time.
Here are the top 50 hashtags on Instagram, in terms of posts made using that particular hashtag. You can also see how many posts that have been made using those tags (in writing moment).
#love 1,089,987,752
#instagood 599,982,377
#photooftheday 423,547,564
#beautiful 393,233,547
#fashion 386,108,562
#tbt 373,455,553
#happy 373,082,615
#cute 368,569,374
#followme 339,412,260
#like4like 332,732,796
#follow 326,166,199
#me 323,244,404
#picoftheday 318,597,564
#selfie 305,187,300)
#summer 277,929,644
#instadaily 275,181,775
#friends 271,826,269
#art 261,044,240
#girl 256,266,022
#repost 254,174,642
#fun 251,349,747
#nature 236,633,805
#smile 235,651,121
#style 226,500,272
#instalike 225,538,622
#food 224,294,601
#family 214,988,526
#likeforlike 213,385,984
#tagsforlikes 211,994,791
#igers 206,887,256)
#fitness 200,191,423
#follow4follow 193,668,023
#nofilter 193,291,735
#travel 188,424,150
#instamood 186,324,569
#life 185,002,214
#amazing 184,682,322
#beauty 175,043,621
#vscocam 164,867,301
#sun 158,097,868
#bestoftheday 151,491,156
#instagram 150,222,497
#music 149,345,111
#beach 147,236,544
#followforfollow 147,193,733
#photo 145,639,305
#sky 140,993,101
#vsco 137,589,365
#dog 137,068,762
#sunset 135,583,979
Apart from the list above, there are some great hashtag websites for Instagram, that updates the list of top hashtags.
1. Websta.me
Websta gives you a ton of different analytics for your Instagram page, which is very valuable as a brand. But in addition, they also present the top 100 hashtags, in terms of most uploaded posts.
2. Tagsforlikes
Tagsforlikes, also known as TFL, is one of the most famous Instagram hashtag websites. TFL makes completed lists of 30 hashtags in a ton of different niches, so when you are posting certain pics, you can look for tags that are related to that pic and tap “copy” once you find a niche that is relevant to your post.
Then, just tap paste in your post, and you’ve implemented 30 hashtags (which is the maximum amount of hashtags in a post on Instagram).
Apart from you being able to find hashtags relevant to the thing that you’re posting on TFL, you are also able to find a set of 30 hashtags, with the most popular tags on Instagram. And the same goes here. Simply copy the set of tags and paste them in your post. With TFL, hashtags on Instagram are simplified – a lot.
3. Tagblender
Just like Tagsforlikes, you choose category related to your page/post, and then, a suggestion of 30 hashtags that you can copy comes up .
Of course, they also have a “top tags” category, where you can copy the top 30 tags, top 60 and top 90.
How To Find Trending Hashtags on Instagram
Trending hashtags are not the same as popular hashtags. Trending hashtags are normally only popular for a short while, but if you use popular hashtags when they are living its glory days, you can get a lot of traction and visitors to your page.
Trending hashtags are often related to a large brand’s campaign or other types of real-life trends or huge events, such as #kyliejennerlipchallenge or #terrorattack.
Shortly summarized, trending hashtags are very effective when they are trending but not so effective when they’re not. By staying up to date with real-life trends and trending hashtags, you can be quick to implement them into your Instagram strategy.
When it comes to hopping on trend hashtags, there are two approaches you can take:
- Only hop on trends related to your industry
- Use trending hashtags that aren’t related to your industry
As you can imagine, using the first method will give you much more targeted results, however depending on the industry you’re in, trending hashtags might be a rare thing.
The second method isn’t as targeted, and you should be careful with which trends you’re hopping on. Just make sure that the trending tag can be tied back to your company and seem genuine and authentic.
Here are some tips on how you can find trending hashtags on Instagram:
1. Trendspottr
Trendspottr lets you spot emerging trends and related hashtags on Instagram, among many different other things, such as:
- Find top trending photos and videos for any tag or keyword
- Discover what’s trending about your brand, campaign, or any topic of interest
With the app, you can discover top trending hashtags related to any search query and stay on top of every trend, which can boost your reach to your audience.
Trendspottr cost $49 per month so you have to think about whether it is worth it or not.
2. Jump on holiday trends
To take advantage of holiday trends, you don’t need a bunch of fancy tools. You just need to be on your toes, knowing what events are up and coming.
If you’re not sure what hashtag to use when it comes to a holiday, simply write the name of the holiday in the hashtag search bar on Instagram, and you’ll get a bunch of related hashtags.
If you want to stay prepared, Sproutsocial compiled a hashtag holiday calendar for 2017, letting you know about all the holiday hashtags during the year.
Download the holiday calendar here
3. Hashtagify.me
With hashtagify.me, you can get access to the top trending hashtags and learn how their rank has changed over time.
You can sort trending hashtags by language, rank, period popularity and trend.
4. Hashtagnow.co
This website presents a “Hashtag of the week” every single week (among many other things) so you can stay updated with th latest hashtag trends every single week.
