Hashtags, hashtags, hashtags. You know them and you love them. But here’s what our hashtag mistake was AND how we quickly learned from it and rerouted.

If you follow us on our IG (our second language), you know that I post pretty early in the morning. Side story- I did this because when I was building up my business I was working full-time and that was the only time I had time to post. I got a lot of great responses and kept it up. Plus, I need to wake up early to get a head start on the day anyways, so it’s partly motivation.

Back to the story

Here’s what happened. I posted just like any morning. It was early, it was a Monday, and we needed to get people motivated, right!? We tend to have an off/ on relationship with our posts to make it look like a checkerboard. Here’s what I mean. I posted this photo:

I thought, “This is going to be a great one! We’re going to get people up, moving and I even wrote a story to go along with it. Here’s the story:

Sometimes when I’m doing work and have a busy day, I forget and when I open it again it’s a treat to see who has commented on it and who has interacted with it. It’s a warm and fuzzy feeling, amiright!?

This Day It Was Different

Yes, this day we made our hashtag mistake was different. I got into the office and around 10:00 I checked it. It only had 13 likes… WHAAAAT?? I looked at it again. Closed out of my IG app and opened it again. WHAAAAAT?? It was still only at 13 likes. One of the likes was Kate too, LOL.

I refreshed it again and looked. STILL 13 likes. Let me preface this by the way. We usually get a little over 100 likes on our photos and the majority of them come within the first hour or so. People always flip through the photos and like them after the fact, however, I’ve seen (for us) this happens within the first hour of us posting. We also had posted 3 hours ago now. It was after 10:00 and I posted before 7:00 AM…

Duh. We Forgot…

After not being able to figure it out I asked Kate, “Did you see our latest IG post?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, why the heck do we only have 13 likes!?” She said, “Oh, you didn’t put any hashtags on this one.”

DUH. Oh gosh. HOW could I forget that. I always preach to our clients that they NEED to use hashtags, especially on Instagram. That’s Instagram’s second language too! I usually put them in the comments of the post but this time I guess I forgot and moved on to checking my email or something else.

Here’s What We Found

If you thought hashtags were something that you mayyybe needed to do. I’m here to tell you, plead with you to change your thoughts. Here’s what we found:

It was 10:12, to be exact and still barely any interaction. This is proof that we posted THREE hours before and had barely any interaction. 13 people… that’s sad.

Our Advice

To avoid making our hashtag mistake… if you haven’t gleaned where we’re going, I’ll spell it out for you. YOU NEED HASHTAGS ON INSTAGRAM. Here are three quick, easy reasons why (besides the above example):

• It enables people to find you
• It helps you come up when people search those hashtags
• It increases interaction

As you now know, hashtags are essential, however, they’re only this essential on Instagram. What I mean by that is, don’t email someone and use hashtags. Side story- my, now, fiance got an email from someone on LinkedIn with about 10 hashtags following it. People, you don’t need hashtags in your email. That one made me LOL.

Off Instagram

On Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ we suggest using one to two hashtags. Studies say if you use over two on those sites it distracts from your message.

On Instagram

You should use a minimum of 11 and a max of 30. If you use over 30, Instagram will delete your caption AND your hashtags and only post your photo. A client learned that the hard way. (Read about that story here.)

If you’re still an IG newbie, read our this article here. If you need some outside help from someone who speaks the lingo, contact us here!

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