I used to not mind all the likes I could get on my Instagram posts and how many people were engaged with my content. However, after having a side business, I realized that using social media is much more than what meets the eye. From social media engagement itself, you can have a chance of getting people to consider buying what you sell. For that reason alone, many business owners start hiring social media services to engage with their potential and returning buyers. Social media is an essential piece of your business marketing strategy because social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. With more than three billion people around the world using social media every month, it’s no passing trend. Now with the rise of Instagram use for social media, it has become clearer that Instagram has better potentials for you to increase your brand awareness. Instagram enables a business to sell something more than just products. It can help to build up a better word of mouth. Reaching out to the audience through a platform like Instagram makes the relations with the target audience friendlier. However, reaching more audience and improving engagement with users is not an easy matter especially if you don’t set up social media ads. That being said, there is one of the ways you can ‘cheat’ Instagram marketing strategy without actually cheating if you haven’t got the time to hire a social media specialist; hashtags. Hashtags on Instagram are useful as they help other Instagram users discover your profile, which can ultimately increase the likelihood of obtaining more followers. Contrary to Twitter, using more specific hashtags on Instagram can help build a bigger audience for your business…only if you use it properly. So, how do you use hashtags for your business Instagram account posts and stories? Keep reading to find out!

When using hashtags, here are a few rules you need to know in order to use it properly:

• Before posting your content, do some hashtag research
• Find words that are related to your content and your business
• Look at the number of engagements using the specific hashtags
• Remember this; hashtags with most posts (like hashtags with million posts) may give you a boost in likes because many people will likely search those specific hashtags; however, there is also a higher chance that your posts that use those hashtags would be ‘cloistered’ and it could be possible that your posts would disappear from those specific hashtags because there would be other new posts coming from other users in just a few seconds since well, many people use those hashtags. Hashtags with thousands up to hundred thousand posts (below a million) may not give you a boost in likes and findings, but you can help people who are looking for what you sell narrow down search results and directly find you. Yes, hashtags like that can improve the possibility of your Instagram posts to be found by people in an easier way. For that reason,
• It is important to combine both hashtags with most and least engagement in one post
• You can use up to 30 hashtags and anything beyond that won’t show up in search, but I recommend using at least 15–20. In general, more is better! Go for all 30 if you use them well. Include as many as you can use strategically while staying relevant to your business.
• Yes, you can use hashtags in your Instagram stories and even your bio! Make use of the right hashtags that are relevant to your business
• Avoid using irrelevant topics and hashtags no matter how popular and trending those hashtags at the moment

Those are the rules to Instagram hashtag cheat sheet! That way, you don’t really cheat but if you follow those rules, you are on the right path of your business world.