Copy and Paste these Instagram Top Hashtags (Updated: 12.10.12)

@bberg1010:disqus Thank you for you comment and you brought up some interesting points which have resulted in this long response, I apologize in advance.

I will follow up with a post about what the different hashtags represent later this week. But for now:

As to your point with photos not being applicable to a particular stream or tag with the above hashtags, every month I chose from Webstagram’s Top 100 Tags list, (http://web.stagram.com/hot/) specifically looking for general use tags that have mass appeal.

When I originally wrote this article I debated with myself about how many tags are too many. Ultimately after checking some people that I follow and a number of different popular photos on instagram within these same tags I chose 15 as my max for this article. I’ll admit even 10 seems long but I also considered the four points below I do to be less spammy.

1st I only apply these tags to photos that I think are interesting and engaging
2nd I always respond to likes and comments and usually get more engagement from doing so and I always appreciate the feedback myself.
3rd From time to time I like and comment on my followers pictures.
4th With 40 million users the shelf life of hashtags is very very fast, many people want to have their photos appreciated as well. So I consider it diversification to draw more attention to your photos and your brand to use a number of hashtags. But there is a limit especially if there is no relevancy.

People are smart they know you want them to look at your stuff they’ll forgive hashtags for a really good shot or interesting picture. (But don’t post hashtags on Facebook that’s just annoying)

For a social media strategy it is a little tricky to find a balance of pushing your content but also being a part of the conversation. For a brand I would start with a little research into which hashtags fit your strategy; web.stagram.com by the way is a great way to do this from a computer.

To give you an example of my own use in a recently I offered some social media advice to a manager at Baby Blue’s BBQ here in Philadelphia. (Btw great place, I highly recommend it) Obviously they were tagging their photos with #bbq and #philly but national tags might not bring more local patrons to their tables and bar, the #philly tag might help some but the city is kind of spread out. So doing a little research into instagram and hashtags we looked for into their local and city wide areas and at first we found out that the hyper-local news reporters have instagram too. Which Baby Blue’s now follow and engage with on both twitter and instagram. Additionally we found that there is a popular hashtag used by the students in one of the surrounding colleges. They capitalize on this tag by engaging the students and by posting their own pictures for the students to see as well. Another idea we came up with was to make up a hashtag which they follow for patrons to post their food and drink to and the user with the best picture that month gets a prize at the end of the month.

Obviously the use has to fit your strategy and focus on your market segments. If you’re a national brand you would be focusing more on mass appeal use the above tags but if you’re focusing on a local market or a specific market segment you would want to focus more on the influencers and hashtags that apply within that segment or area.

I hope I answered your questions or at least gave you some ideas which lead you to your answers.

-Jason

BBerg1010 you’ll find that I’ve begun listing more information on the hashtags at this address: http://aptsonic.com/meanings-behind-instagrams-top-hashtags/ I hope this helps you!

Thank you for reading!

Nath Thanks for reading!

Franny,

In some cases they may have followed a lot of people in exchange for a follow back, and then unfollowed them once they reached a certain number of followers. Unfortunately I have seen this done on twitter and its probably just as likely on Instagram.

Another way to do this is a gig site like fiverr.com. Fiverr has people that will do a task for 5 dollars. In some cases a vendor might offer 500 followers for $5 or another might offer 5,000 followers for $5. The vendor will then use a bot to create 5,000 fake accounts and then follow people that paid him $5. These types of followers slowly disappear over time as anti spam tools catch up. Its a funny practical joke to play on people at times, it happened to me. I have 3,400+ twitter followers, only around 400 I suspect to be real.

The other thing might be that the person is genuinely popular in their professional or social circles. Remember with Instagram you’re only seeing a small piece of that person; they might be known for something much larger outside of Instagram.

Those are just 3 ideas that came to mind, hope they helped.
-Jason