At the end of March 2022, an announcement by Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, sparked strong reactions on social networks. The hashtags sur Instagram would not really have an impact on the publications. So should you review your social media strategy?
This news has not gone unnoticed, especially by several social network experts such as Matt Navarra or Allie Mason, Expert and Instagram coach. But even though all claim that hashtags do not affect the impression of posts on Instagram, analyzing several data to really see what is still useful.
This is exactly what he proposed Social insider following having analyzed 75,361,233 publications distributed between March 2021 and March 2022. The goal: to see if hashtags play a role in the number of views of posts, calculated as the average engagement rate per impression.
“Not really” according to Adam Mosseri.
53% of respondents said the main reason for using hashtags on Instagram is to increase the reach and views of posts.
For Adam Mosseri, this is clear: hashtags on Instagram do not increase the views of posts on Instagram. They serve to categorize content so users can find it easily. They also help them understand what a post is, 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.
Although this makes sense to some extent, and since by definition a hashtag helps find content and maximize organic searches (especially when a page has a large following), user trends don’t always reflect how the algorithms actually work.
You can see that the number of hashtags in a post does not really influence the impressions of the posts. The data shows no significant difference in the average engagement rate per impression of the analyzed posts, regardless of the number of hashtags used.
According to the data, there are no significant differences on the impression rate means of publications regarding the number of hashtags and followers.
You should use on average 3-4 ou 5-6 hashtags to maximize your chances of getting more post views, depending on your account size,
Accounts with 50,000 to 1 million subscribers
The only noticeable trend is for accounts with 50,000 to 1 million followers. Ltheir impression rates go down as they use more hashtags. Best practice for large accounts is to post Instagram content with three-four hashtags to get a average engagement rate per impression of 3.42%.
Accounts with 5,000 to 10,000 followers and between 10,000 to 50,000 followers
For small accounts (5,000 to 10,000 subscribers)they need to include an average of five to six hashtags in their posts to reach a 3.79% average engagement rate per impression. The same is true for medium-sized accounts (10,000 to 50,000 subscribers), which allows them to get an impression share of 3.5%.
Conclusion
According to this data and experts in the field, hashtags on Instagram do not really help to increase the impression of posts. But remember that it all depends on your audience, the types of hashtags you use, and the goals you have set for yourself.
The best advice to follow is to use the right hashtags on Instagram for your target audience, so that your messages are 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 time to better categorize your posts and help your followers find a specific topic more easily.