The popularity of hashtags is not unknown to brands who are working tirelessly to up their social media game. Instagram has emerged as the numero-uno choice for business marketers due to its potential to reach a vast base of customers with just the use of right hashtags.
Whether you are a business selling locally or trying to rope in location-specific customers, here are the top ways to find local hashtags on Instagram.
Search and check volume
If you type in your local city or county names in the Instagram search, you will find related hashtags. You must take a stab at guessing first. One search and Instagram reveals all the related ones. This way you can get an idea of which Instagram hashtags are being used and are prevalent. Instagram also gives you a number below the hashtag, something like “391k posts”, depicting the number of users who have used that particular term. You can pick some niche and some trending hashtags from the search bar.
Take inspiration from other locals
Your best bet to find the “working” hashtags is by observing the posts of other local businesses. Sometimes you may not be aware of the local hashtags that are already prevalent in your city or locality and are easily known to customers. Looking in the right places can really give you a good list of local hashtags being used by both businesses and consumers. Even if you come across local brands who are promoting an entirely different product than yours, be sure to check out their hashtags for useful ones. Chances are that the target leads are also looking for products with those popular hashtags.
Observe the local re-posters
There are tons of re-posting accounts on Instagram who repost the images or stories related to a certain industry or business. Every major city or state has some accounts who either repost stories of the locals or images of the city’s attractions on a regular basis. You will usually find these accounts showing off local food and local art. Check out their posts and see what hashtags they are using to share featured posts. Such reposting accounts are of real importance to brands because they are usually followed in large numbers by the locals of the city or state and can help your brand get noticed by the right audience.
Example: Look at the hashtags used by tourismireland account. These can be used to target the local people instantly.
Post about locals
One good hack is to find local celebrities, local hotspots, local food joints, local drinks and to post about them. People have diverse interests and they may not be actively following local hashtags in your niche. However, they are very likely to be following local celebrities, local magazines and other general interest local stuff. It is spammy to use those hashtags without actually posting about them. So, find a clever way to post about local interests and link it back to your brand.
Take the help of other tools
The world of Instagram is continuously changing. What hashtags work today may be beaten by other popular hashtags in a matter of weeks. So, in order to stay updated and in the race, try looking for Instagram hashtag finder tools that will help you find a fitting hashtag.
Use rule of the thumb
There are certain standard hashtags that every location has. For instance, you will always find #city+blogger #city+foodie #city+traveller. Sometimes the city names are abbreviated. For instance, Singapore is always #sg+foodie. You can also try the reverse in most cases. If you are a travel business, try #travel+city and the likes.
You have 30 hashtags to experiment with in every post. There is no point using the same ones over and over again. Consider expanding with province level targeting or go niche with county level targeting.
Appear in local stories
While it is not directly related to local hashtag search, you will find it useful to geotarget with your stories. Make sure you put local hashtags in stories as it will appear in feeds of all the people following those local hashtags. It is difficult to rank in the discovery section, but it is easy to appear in ‘related stories.
In a nutshell
There are plenty of hacks to work your way around it. No matter what method you use, make sure you are not going too niche, you are geotargeting every post, you are diversifying outside your genre to tap different locals and you are experimenting with new hashtags every time.
