The moment I realized hashtags were killing my reach on Instagram

I spent about 3 months loading every post with 30 hashtags thinking that was the only way to get seen. Then I noticed a smaller account with way less followers was getting double the engagement using just 5 targeted ones. It hit me that Instagram's algorithm might actually be punishing people for spamming hashtags. Has anyone else tested dropping hashtag count and seen their numbers go up or down?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_fiona14d ago

Mike from my local pub tried this exact thing last summer and it was wild to watch. He had like 800 followers and was getting maybe 10 likes per post with 30 hashtags. Then he cut down to 8 hashtags, all related to just craft beer and the neighborhood, and his posts started getting 40 plus likes within a few hours. The weird part was he started getting tagged in random people's stories because they were actually reading his funny captions about the weekly trivia night instead of just scrolling past a wall of hashtags. He said the algorithm also started showing his posts to people who actually lived nearby instead of random accounts in other countries. I tried it on my personal page with like 15 hashtags down to 5 and saw a small jump in comments too, nothing huge but definitely better.

ross.lily16d ago

i was loading up with 30 hashtags too and it felt like screaming into the void... then i tried something weird where i only used hashtags that were in the caption itself and my posts started popping off. maybe the algorithm likes when theyre part of the story instead of just dumped at the bottom.

jessej2315d ago

My buddy Mike runs a small coffee shop account and he cut from 25 hashtags down to 7 for a month. His likes stayed about the same but his comments more than doubled because people were actually reading his captions instead of scrolling past the hashtag dump. Take it for what it's worth but he swears by keeping it tight now.

-1