Wondering which hashtags your dealership should be using on Instagram?
In this article, I will help you discover how to use hashtags correctly and efficiently to get the results you need and want on the world’s 3rd biggest social site.
Understand the Ingredients in an Efficient Instagram Hashtag Recipe
Finding the right hashtags takes time, effort and research. There are countless hashtags you can use to define your dealership and connect with your audience and, with a well-crafted strategy, you can target the right audiences, drive real conversions and start closing deals originating from your social media efforts.
Instagram lets you include anywhere between one and thirty hashtags per post, and a simple search of any of these tags will show you how many posts are associated with it.
To ensure your strategy is effective, you will need to make up your hashtags from four categories. The right combination will maximise your post performance and help you reach the right audience. With the following formula, you can identify the 14-22 perfect hashtags for each of your posts.
The Perfect Formula:
Choose 1-3 branded hashtags
These are the hashtags you use specifically for brand association. They may be brand-specific and campaign-related.
Pick 3-5 hashtags for your niche
These will be the most effective hashtags for you to use to gain engagement from your target audience. These will be less saturated and hyper-targeted.
Identify 5-7 moderately popular hashtags
Moderately popular hashtags likely have between 10,000-100,000 posts associated with them.
Select 5-7 extremely popular hashtags
Extremely popular hashtags are those that have anywhere between 100,000-500,000 posts associated with them. Don’t use too many of these as it could invite bot activity and users completely un-related to your audience.
The reason for using this formula is due to the way that the platform’s algorithm ranks your post. Instagram reviews each piece of content by looking at the engagement it generates from both followers and non-followers.
When you use popular hashtags, your content will appear in searches for seconds, generating an immediate burst of activity. On the other hand, when you use niche hashtags, your content will stay active in searches for hours, and Instagram’s algorithm will recognise that the content has a long lifespan.
By gaining high levels of engagement, your content will appear in the ‘Top Posts’ section of the hashtags, driving more traffic to your profile and inciting more activity.
If you have set-up and structured your profile well enough that newcomers will want to follow you after stumbling across it, then your followers will rise. But, that’s a conversation for another blog.
Use Hashtags on Every Post
Now that you understand the right hashtag recipe for your posts, you need to figure which ones will benefit your dealership specifically. All of the hashtags you use on each post should directly relate to the content, your brand and your industry. Otherwise it will be irrelevant and will gain an irrelevant audience.
- Content hashtagsshould directly relate to the items in the post itself.
- Industry hashtagsmay not be directly related to what’s in the post but are specific to the industry and clients you serve.
- Niche hashtagsare specific to your target audience.
- Branded hashtagsare hashtags that you and your customers use to showcase and tag your content on Instagram.
Content hashtags typically vary depending on the items or locations included in the post itself. Your industry hashtags, niche hashtags, and branded hashtags should be relatively consistent for all your content. Industry hashtags will be more broadly focused on the automotive world as a whole, whereas your niche hashtags dig deep into the very targeted cars and products you offer.
If you’re struggling to find hashtags that work well on Instagram for your brand, look at the suggested and related hashtags in the Instagram search results. When you search for any specific hashtag, a sub-list recommends others that are related. You can also seek inspiration from competitors and others in your industry that are receiving admirable levels of engagement from their target audience.
To talk with Ronnie about the social media services Click Dealer offers its dealership clients and how we can help improve your engagement, reach, brand recognition and social leads, get in touch today via[email protected] , 01782 478220 or via our contact page.
