Recently, I posted a hugeeee post on lots of different hashtags to use on Instagram to grab new followers and of course rank up the likes. Instagram is a huge ball game and some times we seem to be acing it, and other times we are not, for whatever unknown reason.

I had become stale with the hashtags I was using and I wasn’t seeing the full benefit. Like many of us, I wanted to grow in followers and engagement and despite my efforts, I wasn’t seeing any huge improvement.

With the turn of a new year, I started to focus heavily on how to organically grow on the gram. The target is 10,000 followers and well, I ain’t gonnah get there if I use the same old same old hashtags every sodding post now am i?

I like to do things for myself, and although there are lots of online resources offering both free and paid guides, I really wanted to tailor the tags to my posts specifically. So, I started from scratch.

Here’s how you can start your own bundles of Hashtags and how to find the best engagement, for FREE!

ps. if you do feel super lazy and want to use some of the ones I have put together for various different content types, check my post here. You will have to subscribe to my BlogBlast email to gain access via password, but it’s all FREE.
Sign up down here…..

Firstly, look in the comments

We bloggers use hashtags all the time and it’s known we hide our hashtags in the comment section. Be sure to check out what other bloggers are using hashtag wise, especially if they are creating similar content to yourself, or gathering engagement from your target audience.

Make notes of popular hashtags and even look at other content associated with that tag. This will give you a great indication of some of the hashtags you should start to use.

Use online resources and apps.

Now you’ve got a broad idea of some of the hashtags being used by the big boys, start to collate and research around those hashtags. As mentioned before, you really want a wide sweeping range of hashtags that have a large amount of images associated with them, and small! Using apps and online resources to search using those big hashtags will lead you onto some of the small, similar and associated ones too.

I would highly rate http://hashtag.bigbangram.com/ for getting a broad range of hashtags together associated with one key word. When creating my huge bank of hashtags, I used this alone. It’s free to use, easy and gives you a great indication of tag popularity.

Other FREE online resources include Instavast , display purposes , seek metrics, and all-hashtag.

If you are more of an app kinda person, consider using focalmark. Once again it’s free to use and considers your location too, but you do have to pay to upgrade to be able to use things like analytics.

Experiment as much as possible

As with anything, it’s all a learning curve. Sometimes you can have a stonking great result and others it falls into the abyss of Instagram. Play around, mix and match hashtags and don’t be scared to fail sometimes.

I have been using and researching weekly for new, upcoming or popular hashtags specific to my current and upcoming posts. Instagram is a game, you’ve just got to play it!

Let me know of any super hashtags that you use and be sure to share any of your tips to tackling instagram and gathering more followers and engagement from hashtags.

Other posts worth a read :
Social media – how often should I be posting?
Top tips to tackling and managing social media
Stock free imagery to use on your blog now

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