Top Instagram Hashtags in 2021: Wedding, Fitness, Food, Fashion and Photography

 • 14 min read

Intro

Top Instagram Hashtags. The core feature of Instagram is visual content. But even hundreds of pixel-perfect images are not enough to promote your business on this social network. And, in a huge proportion, hashtags are held responsible for increasing the number of views of your content, even without advertising.

Studies prove that posts that contain just one hashtag get more feedbacks. Still, there is also an opinion that hashtags don’t increase the level of interaction (70% of Instagram posts are not seen) but help to make a post visible for the target audience. That also speaks in favor of their importance.

In any case, use hashtags deliberately planning every decision and you’ll boost your business, popularize your blog on social networks, and raise the interest of your target audience.

For sure, you must know how often igers post on Instagram. Every day the newborn content appears in an unlimited amount. So, your posts can get lost in this soup.

Keep reading and we will tell you how to stand out using tags for promotion. But first, let’s look closer at some interesting hashtag statistics!

How to Use Instagram: The Definitive Guide

Hashtags are a word or phrase marked by a ⧣ at the beginning. Providing messages with hashtags, netizens tag them and enable other users to find thematic information through a search. This kind of labeling was borrowed from Twitter.
Hashtags serve to:

  • Highlight the main message thought using keywords
  • Group information by topics
  • Provide a quick search on a topic a person is interested in
  • How to type hashtags?
  • A word in a hashtag should follow the bars without any space
  • Leave space between different hashtags
  • If you need a hashtag that includes more than one component, write all words without spaces

Usually, Instagram users search on trendy hashtags. The most well-liked are always monitored and you don’t neglect searching for them on Google. Try to do it from time to time to surf’s up.
There are, as well, unique hashtags. They are connected directly to some (only one) account on Instagram. Those contain a user’s nickname and are representatives of a profile.
Withal, long rows of hashtags under photos don’t look attractive. Moreover, there are many people that consider them irritating. So, don’t trust hashtags unconditionally, as it can cause disappointment.
Some more secrets about hashtags:

  1. As a way of promotion, hashtags are not best of the best. Especially be attentive with the most frequently used of them. They can attract mass-trappers
  2. Examine in the advanced statistics whether the hashtags you use work or not
  3. You can put 5 and 10 or even 30 hashtags. But it also would be harder to determine which one works
  4. Both, in a post or comments, hashtags are indexed in exactly like manner. If you add hashtags to comments, do it immediately after the recent publication. To get into top, every post should be new
  5. Shadowbans are not real. That’s proved officially. If your hashtags don’t work there are must be some technical bug. OR, someone has complained about your publication. Just wait for some weeks or create new hashtags
  6. Yes, hashtags can be copy-pasted and work the same, as were put manually
  7. Don’t forget to change hashtags, at least their location. Otherwise, with every new post, a part of the text will be repeated, which reduces its uniqueness, and, therefore, coverage
  8. Hashtags are not a panacea. Don’t blame shadowbans or Instagram, pay more attention to your feed quality and try other ways of promotion
  9. Read more in our cool eBook How to Use Instagram: The Definitive Guide

How to Use Instagram: The Definitive Guide

Top 5 Instagram Templates Bundles

Instagram’s Hottest Hashtags: 2021 Edition

First and foremost, you should know how to pick the hashtags you benefit from among thousands of options. So in order to find the right tags on Instagram, you have to pay attention to such things as low-frequency, mid-frequency, high-frequency. Frequency is basically the number of times a particular word or phrase was used, so for achieving quick results, you want to pick high-frequency word combinations. Thus, here’s how you can check the popularity of tags you would like to use:

  • Enter the word combination you want to utilize in the search.
  • Check the suggested options for the number of publications.
  • Copy the tags you are going to use into three columns, sorted by frequency level.
  • Repeat it for all the words and phrases you think would work for your posts.
  • Engage geotags. This option will allow other users to find you on a regional basis. For example, you can use something like #chicagofooddelivery as well as add popular geolocation in the city. Geotagging can include subway stations, cities, streets, districts, shopping malls, libraries, business centers, supermarkets, or even different cities’ locations.
  • Personalize tags. For example, you can use a word by which people will only find your brand and everything connected with it.
  • Use viral tags. These are those tags that are often used by users regardless of the type of their Instagram page and its content. For example, cities, countries, dates, sometimes well-known brands. For instance, when you advertise bags, you can also mention its brand as well as that it goes well with #Gucciboots.
  • Once you have analyzed the tags for frequency, you might want to use them according to the following formula:

    5 high-frequency + 10 mid-frequency + 7 low-frequency + 4 geotags + 4 viral

    Once every two weeks, update all your #words and observe the statistics. You can also slightly change the formula, it might help to promote your post further.

    How to Hide Hashtags

    You can hide annoying # but still get all the benefits of having them. First of all, keep in mind that it is recommended to use no more than 30 tags per publication. Thus, in case you have to use more or you simply don’t want your post to look like spam, you can try and do the following:

    Make a new post;
    Add only the most relevant tags to the text of your post;
    Write all the remaining tags in the comments.

    2021 Instagram’s Most Popular Hashtags

    Now once we figured out how to correctly utilize popular tags, let us have a brief look at the viral ones. So here’s the top 10 according to Metricool.

    1. #Love by 2021 it has been used 1,597,832,456 times
    2. #Instagood – 988,131,008
    3. #Photooftheday – over 490 million
    4. #Fashion – 475,992,147
    5. #Beautiful – 456,547,737
    6. #Happy – 422,116,954
    7. #Like4like – 410,451,976
    8. #Picoftheday – 373,976,698
    9. #TBT – 489,000,000
    10. #Art – more than 334 million
    As you can see, these tags are quite universal, which means that you can use them for pretty much any sort of posts. You might have also noticed that these tags have been around since the very first days of Instagram’s existence, which partly explains their extreme popularity. However, this very popularity makes them less useful since millions of people are using them and it’s very unlikely that many people will see your post on their Explore page. Thus, don’t overuse them.

    5 Steps toward Creating the Right Hashtags Strategy

    Evaluate the Productivity of Your Hashtags

    To analyze the engagements of publications is even easier for business accounts. For this, just pick “View Insights” button below from your publication.

    It provides with info on how many people have seen this post from Home, Profile or Hashtags. If a hashtag is worthy, igers will follow it to search posts

    Add Active Hashtags to the Bio of Your Profile

    On Instagram, there’s also possible to use clickable hashtags and usernames. You can do it not only in the post heading but, as well, in your bio. It’s a perfect chance to underline the branded content for profitable promotion.

    Branded hashtags in the bio make the process of direct search absolutely easier for your followers. So, if have an online store, use hashtags for clothes, makeup, delivery terms, etc. In addition, in such a way, you can announce your new collection. Just add a special purposeful hashtag to your bio.

    Place Hashtags in Instagram Stories

    After the recent Instagram renew, another cool feature came up. It’s the possibility to supply Stories with hashtags. First of all, they are clickable. So, if you have other posts that with this hashtag and people are interested to find out more, they can follow the link.

    Secondly, everyone can find your story searching it by the hashtag in Search & Explore page. As a person clicks once, your story comes in the queue with other stories that includes this hashtag.

    No idea how to make a story with clickable hashtags? It couldn’t be easier! Just swipe up and click on the # button.

    Encourage People to Subscribe for Your Hashtags

    The latest update provides us also with a possibility to follow hashtags. When you start following one, you just open a particular page and see all new posts that contain this hashtag. Now, you can keep up with the relevant posts in a few mouse clicks.

    It’s very useful for your business popularity when people follow your hashtags. It enhanced your chances for success.
    Still, don’t overdo with encouragement. Instead of begging subscribers to follow the hashtag, try to make a useful subject heading with unique content under the certain hashtag. You’ll see on your own how they follow it to stay tuned. Because 70% of Instagram posts don’t get seen, don’t forget! You can mention this fact once in a post, by the way 🙂

    Understand What Kind of Hashtag to Choose

    Using the concrete sort of hashtags on your account can be good and be wrong. So, the awareness about different hashtags and their types is necessary. The same, you should mention what tags suit your profile. Well, there are three key hashtags groups on Instagram:

    • branded
    • community
    • campaign

    If you use Instagram for business, then branded hashtags are the welcome. Not always they contain the name of the company. Still, they might reflect the specifics of the company.
    For instance, natural sneakers company AllBirds has its own branded hashtag #weareallbirds that both contains the name of the company and gives an overall idea of the brand.

    To create UGC, some brands launch giveaways. A famous underwear company CalvinKlein created one under a hashtag #mycalvins, which took root seriously and is used till now (even by cats):

    Community hashtags are usually created to provide everyone all over Instagram with info about your activity. On Instagram, there are so many places that gather followers by special hashtags. For example:

    • #IHaveThisThingWithPink for people that adore rosy-toned things;
    • #UrbanJungleBloggers for people that dedicated all of the free space at home to growing plants;
    • #FilmIsNotDead for people, who still support camera film;
    • #GirlsWhoTravel for girls, who share travel content.

    Community hashtags reflect the leading idea of certain activity clearly.
    Campaign hashtags are short-term as they are usually dedicated to the certain event and contain its name. If it’s a new collection of lipsticks, a hashtag might include its name and the year, for instance:

    Once you define the specifics of your account, you will be able to brainstorm the hashtags that will work.

    How to Pick up the Right Hashtag for Instagram Account?

    Probably, one of the best ways to find out if what hashtags will work is check out which of them are already used:

    • competitors
    • reputable representatives of the niche
    • target audience

    If you choose a wide-spread hashtag, such as #love, #travel, #blogging, you will compete with a larger audience (really immense!). For instance, there are 1.4 billion posts under #love hashtag. They appear in a matter of minutes or even seconds. The chances of being noticed are miserable.
    Therefore…

    Try to be Specific.

    Let’s say you attended Rihanna’s show and want to write a brief review and get noticed with the right hashtag. If you put #rihanna, you will have to compete with 11.9 million posts. If you choose #rihannanavy, the number of publications reduces to 1.9 million, for #rihannafenty – to 518k, for #rihannafan – to 70.3k! The chances of getting more engagement with the last hashtag to grow.
    The same happens other situations when you choose what hashtag to paste.

    Use Specialized Tools

    There is a great tool created by a well-known visual marketing platform Later. It helps to get the latest ideas about new hashtags. Now, you can place them in a proper way. Unfortunately, the service is paid but the prices are quite affordable starting from $19 per month for a business dedicated account and $9 for a private one.
    In order to get hashtags ideas, open a post and type a hashtag that you want to see there. The service will generate a couple of other hashtags in descending order by relevance.
    After that, you can move to the organizational part of the process called Saved Caption feature. With this option, you will be able to create varied hashtag lists formed on your previous activity. It’s possible to create categories and fill them with hashtags that you will be able to copy and paste latter.

    The interface of the service is intuitive and user-friendly.
    Using it is very easy and fast than using Google Sheets, for instance.

    Try Related Hashtags

    As for marketing strategy, there are many opinions on how to make the best of it. It’s very important to give a try to different approaches and analyze how your target audience reacts on them.

    Therefore, try implementing related hashtags. When you type a hashtag in the search bar, you will see other variants in the drop-down menu. There might be some other trendy solutions that could be match your goals.

    To check if a hashtag works, you will get at least to the Top page clicking on it. And it’s a good result by itself because thousands of new people will see your post. The main part of these accounts may be potential representatives of the target audience because Top page is formed on user’s likes, subscriptions, search inquiries, etc.

    There are two factors that influence Instagram’s decision of taking the publication to the Top page or not: the amount of engagement (likes and comments) and the time the post gets feedback. If your post hasn’t become popular within 24 hours, it has no chances anymore.
    Yes, this is the Instagram reality as we know it. This social media platform is super selective nowadays.

    Brief Summary of How to Use Instagram Hashtags in 2021

    So, let’s sum up a little bit the key principles of using Instagram hashtags in the new year:

    1. Choose the Right Hashtags

    Pick up only those hashtags that meet the style of your account, reflect the goal you have, and convey the right message.
    Be specific. Don’t add random hashtags such as #car, #makeup, #fashion. Understand the conception of your advertising campaign, unique features of your company and micro niche. Try to think of the way your potential customers or clients could think.

    2. Research and Analyze

    Don’t ignore the knowledge of leaders of your industry. Make competitive analysis. Discover what hashtags they use and which of them are welcome among their subscribers.
    Don’t use tags that irritate the users. For this, don’t forget to check out the Instagram insights below the post or google for other methods.

    3. Use the Opportunities of the New Instagram Version

    Let hashtags be in bio and stories to encourage people to follow them not to miss your latest news.

    4. Rise Engagement Wisely

    As you’ve might already understood, hashtags are a bit overrated in their indispensability. Just by the matter of their presence in your feed they can’t allure the desirable number of new followers. That’s only you who can do it!
    Heighten the quality of your Instagram page. Share useful or exciting content that is backed by the right hashtags. As an example, you can let your subscribers see “behind the scene process” and tell a story of how their favorite products are made.
    Plus, you can gather UGC with the help of different surveys and contests. A worthy idea would be to ask your customers to upload a photo with a good they purchased in your store and tag your account with the help of your branded hashtag.
    Don’t be spammy! It’s so easy to overdo with hashtags.
    Well, that was the last tip for today. I hope that you highlighted a couple of fresh ideas to enforce in your marketing strategy in 2021! Thanks for your attention 🙂

    Top Instagram Hashtags Stats: Taking Stocks of 2021

    There is to your consideration information researched by many experts. It will help you arrange your workflow on Instagram with higher effectiveness.

    Did know that:

    • To be at the top your number of hashtags per one post shouldn’t exceed 8 or 14 (in accordance with the report made by TrackMaven that analyzed 65,000 social media posts including those on Instagram). The bigger quantity of hashtags may be irritating and even considered as spam.
    • Longer hashtags that consist of 21-24 symbols are really valid because of being unique and laconic. They can convey any of your ideas and purposes better than one-word hashtags (proved by the aforementioned research):
    • Trying to clarify it on examples, imagine you can put #icecreamlover hashtag explaining your post. There is also a more detailed variant #lovepistachioicecreamgrom or just #pistachioicecreamgrom will contain more information. The second one contains more details, like:
      1. you love ice cream;
      2. your favorite flavor is pistachio;
      3. your favorite ice cream store is Grom.
    • 7 from 10 are said to be branded hashtags (up to the research by SproutSocial). If you manage a business they can be useful for creating own information channel. In such a way, it’ll become easier for your target audience to find your account. Moreover, if you want to scale the success of your marketing campaign, you can use such social media analytical tools as SocialBakers or SimplyMeasured. With them, you can test your branded hashtags very quickly.

    By the way, do you know to whom belongs the right of the hashtag invention? Chris Messina – a current Developer lead at Uber was that one who’s originated it.

    On purpose or by accident, in 2007, this smart guy started a trend that now is known as real social media phenomenon with its peculiarities and spheres of influence.

    So, let’s find out the main rules of using hashtags on Instagram in 2021 to power your marketing strategy!

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Top Instagram Hashtags FAQ

📸 Why don’t hashtags always work?

It is a common problem when somebody uses a bunch of tags but their post doesn’t get promoted at all. So the reasons for that might be the following:
Too many likes and followers, excessive activity may seem suspicious to the moderators and your account might get a shadowban;
Adding the same tags under each post;
Complaints from other users;
Sanctions for using third-party programs and web services.
So beware of all these potential problems, utilize different tags, don’t spam, don’t use promotion apps and web services, don’t overuse hashtags, and be friendly to other users.

📸 What is shadow banning?

It’s a partial blocking of your account due to suspicious activity, spamming, and tags overuse. The main signs of it are a significant decrease of likes and new followers and so-called “invisibility” of your page to those people who do not follow you. The trick is your page is still active and your followers can still see your posts as well as like and comment on them but other users will not reach your page.

📸 How can I find out whether my page has been shadowbanned?

Make a new post and use an unpopular tag on it then ask your friend to search the hashtag and see whether your post is visible for other users, if it’s not, then you’ve been shadowbanned. Note that the person who’s helping you cannot be your follower, otherwise, they will see your post anyway.

📸 What should I do if my page has been shadowbanned?

First of all, reduce the activity on your page and stop using services for getting likes and followers if you have been using those. Wait for a while and check whether your page is still blocked using the procedure mentioned above. If you are still blocked, contact the Instagram support team and they will help you solve this issue.

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Article Sources

As an Instagram addict, I have read a whole bunch of articles on how to promote my account, and pretty much all of them suggested using popular various combinations of #words. However, I didn’t know how to use them correctly, which lead to my page being shadow blocked. So I did my research in order to find out how to promote my page by means of tags correctly and don’t get blocked for it. So I thought it would be a good idea to share my knowledge with you. Thus, in this article I utilized the following resources:

  1. Hennessy, Brittany. Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media. Citadel, 2018.
  2. Herman, Jennifer, Eric Butow, Corey Walker. Instagram For Business For Dummies. For Dummies, 2018.
  3. Martin, Sara. “The most used Hashtags on Instagram 2020.” Metricool, 2020, metricool.com/hashtags-on-instagram/. Accessed 29 June 2020.
  4. “Shadow banning.” Wikipedia, 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning. Accessed 29 June 2020.