Staircase/Ladder Instagram Hashtag Strategy

Important terms and principles to know❗️

1. The hashtags you use should be relative to the performance of your account. What do we mean by this? If you tend to get a certain amount of likes or engagement when you post content on Instagram, the hashtags you use should match up with your typical performance. For example, if you get around 200 likes per post, it’s unlikely you will perform as well on a hashtag where users are getting 10k likes per post…
2. …And this is where Average Likes Comes in. Your ‘Average Likes’ is the average amount of likes you get on a post, which you can compare with the Average Likes that users who rank on a specific hashtag get. By comparing these numbers, you can easily predict which hashtags might work for you, and which might not.
3. You can rank on hashtags that are higher-performing or competitive for your account, however, the best way to do this is by ranking on smaller, comparative hashtags first, which help propel your content to wider audiences.
4. Other indicators of the level of competition on a hashtag are the DAPC (Daily Average Post Count – the number of times a hashtag is used on average per day) and Media Count (the number of posts overall in a specific hashtag). If there is a high volume of posts in a hashtag, it is likely more competitive and thus harder to rank on.

The ‘Staircase’ Instagram Hashtag Strategy 📶:

The ‘staircase’ method is an effective way to research Instagram hashtags to increase your reach, engagement, and following on Instagram, it’s also the number one Instagram hashtag strategy for both beginners and experts. We see a lot of users use this strategy as a base and tweak it for what works best for their Instagram accounts.

The name of the technique is a fairly accurate representation of how it works. Let’s look at the basic ‘rules:

• Use 10 hashtags that are 30% below your Average Likes (Set 1)
• Use 10 hashtags that are similar to your Average Likes (Set 2)
• Use 10 hashtags that are 30% and above your Average Likes (Set 3)

You simply use clusters of hashtags as a step to boost yourself onto the next cluster of hashtags.

Let’s visualize a worked example. Say you post some amazing puppy content, and want as many people to see it as possible:

If you research hashtags that are easy for you to rank on, (Set 1) you will start to build up traction, as users searching that hashtag may find and interact with your content – these easier hashtags might be more niche, such as #goldenretrieverplaytime.

(Work out your Average Likes by adding up all the likes over your last 12 posts, then divide that by 12).

Average Likes = 600

30% of 600 = 180 (600*0.3)

30% below Average Likes = 420 (600-180)

30% above Average Likes = 780 (600+180)

This Instagram hashtag strategy is effective because it increases your chances of ‘climbing the stairs’. This means that if you rank highly on the first 10 hashtags (below your Average Likes) then you have a better chance of ranking on the next 10 and so on.

There are also a number of ways you can use the staircase strategy, depending on what works for you. For example, instead of creating sets based on Average Likes, you could create them based on the size of the hashtag or the Daily Average Post Count. Within Flick, we have a feature that allows you to save your groups of hashtags into Collections – so we recommend saving your low, medium and high competition hashtags into separate sets!

After you have started using the staircase strategy, you can check on your results by seeing which specific hashtags you ranked on, in our Analytics Suite. Otherwise, you can head to a post on Instagram and view a more general metric of how many Impressions you received on that post via hashtags.

Whilst this may seem like a lot of effort, it’s absolutely worth it. If you would like to save time when it comes to implementing and executing your new hashtag strategy and research, you can sign up for a free trial with Flick, which makes things a whole lot easier (and faster!).

Feel free to try Flick out – find relevant hashtags for your next post.

Good luck, enjoy your new Instagram hashtag strategy, and don’t hesitate to contact the Flick team if you have any questions! 🎉