There is a ton of information out there about the best hashtags to use to sell more of your products online. Using the right hashtags for small business owners can bump up your engagement and get you in front of people looking for exactly what you're selling. Conversely, using the wrong hashtags can drag your account down, decrease engagement, and push your posts to the bottom of people's feeds, getting you fewer eyeballs than ever.
Over the past few months, there has been an increased interest in purchasing from small, locally owned businesses. We love and work primarily with small businesses, so after years of trial and error, we've put together the 16 best hashtags for small business owners, clients, and overall engagement.
16 Best Hashtags for Small Business Owners
#shoplocal+your city
#business+yourcity
#yourcity+industry ex: ATLFashion
Experimenting with the hashtags you use, how much you use them, and how you post them is a great way to play around with your account and see what works! Instagram's algorithm is updating continuously with the primary goal of getting the most interesting, relevant, and popular information in front of the right audience. Using these hashtags will get you in front of the right audience and, with time, increase engagement!
Best-case scenario? Your posts get a lot of traction and lands on in a top spot in a hashtag search. Research indicates that 81% of people use Instagram to help research products and services. Making your products easy to find on Instagram with relevant hashtags is an essential part of pointing new customers in your direction. If some of the above hashtags aren't relevant for your business (ex: #eco-friendly and you aren't environmentally friendly), then don't use them. You might get some new clicks, but visitors will be disappointed or worse when they realize you misled them.
Where to Post?
We use social media scheduling software to plan out our entire social calendar months in advance, and one of the things we do is make sure the first comment is the chosen hashtags. Aesthetically we think posts look more seamless without a bunch of hashtags, which helps with engagement (Instagram is a visual platform after all). Sometimes the string of hashtags detract from the other content. But this is something you can play with as well, if it makes more sense for you to post hashtags in the caption that's fine, too!
Have more questions about social media? Send us a message at hi@ansleymediacompany.com for more info!