How do you pick which hashtags to use?

We’ve talked about hashtag strategy in the past, and the best way to start your hashtag research. To put strategy simply, you want to focus on hashtags that match your account. This means, that the hashtags you use shouldn’t be too competitive, but should still allow you to have a high-reach opportunity. If your account is focused on fashion, you would want to use hashtags related to fashion, that aren’t too broad but aren’t too niche either. P.S. When we talk about ‘competitiveness’ we mean that the average likes of the posts that are ranking in those hashtags should be similar to the average likes you usually get on your account.

The best way to do this is by creating a mind map of the types of keywords you think your audience (or target audience) would be likely to google or follow. In this example, that might be ‘fashion’ ‘stylingtips’ or ‘ootd’. Once you have these, you want to expand them and find hashtags that are similar or related to your keywords but are better matched to your account.

In general, you want to have a few hashtags that are low competition, a few hashtags that are medium competition, and a few hashtags that are high competition. If you rank on a hashtag that has low competition for your account your post is likely to be seen by more people. The more low-competition hashtags you use, the more likely you are to rank on at least one. If your post gets a lot of attraction because of this spike in engagement, you might then rank on the medium competition hashtags, and then the higher competition hashtags, sending your post to potential virality.

So, let’s go visual to explain this a little better.

I’ve searched one of my keywords in Flick to see if I can get some better options on what I should use for hashtags. Remember to apply your suggested filters, so Flick calibrates to your account and only suggests hashtags that are more likely to help you grow, in relation to your average likes and engagement:

I have searched the keyword ‘stylingtips’ and Flick has suggested 38 hashtags that I could use, grouping them by low competition, medium competition, and high competition:

It’s important to get your ratio right. So, you should pick hashtags that are mostly in the low-medium competition range. Then you can select a couple from the high competition section to use. Why use high-competition hashtags at all? Because if you do rank, you will achieve a high reward in terms of visibility and engagement.

When you select your hashtags, Flick will then show you how many you have selected from each group:

Then, you can keep researching for more related hashtags, or export the hashtags you have selected, and paste them to your new post.

Find out the best hashtags for your account by starting a free trial with Flick!