Instagram Competitions and Giveaways: How to Use Hashtags Correctly?

Learn how to use Instagram hashtags to tag your content and monitor the results

The first thing you should consider before learning how to hashtag correctly is what hashtags are. A hashtag is a label that allows us to find and monitor content. Practically everyone uses hashtags in their Instagram publications, but it is a particularly useful tool when talking about actions, contests, and lotteries run by brands, for example.

Communication and social media strategist consultant Núria Mañé (@nuriacomunica) explains everything we need to know about using hashtags properly:

Types of hashtags

- Generic. They can be used by any user and usually have many associated publications. It is extremely difficult to monitor any content through them. Still, they are very useful to associate a profile, a brand, or a product with the most popular trends or hashtags.
- Corporate or branded. They usually carry the name of the brand or project for which they have been created and are used to position a product or promotion. They can be specific, your own, or a campaign’s and are created to monitor the participation in an activity or a competition.

Anatomy of a perfect hashtag

The perfect hashtag exists and you can create one that suits the needs of your campaign. Just follow these tips:

- Use specific hashtags. To monitor your campaigns, you must use specific hashtags that no one else has used before; otherwise, the posts related to it will be lost in the tide of images tagged with that hashtag that have nothing to do with your content.
- Incorporate the brand into the hashtag. Using corporate tags brings the brand into the hashtag and reminds users who is behind the action.
- It synthesizes the idea. The perfect hashtag is short and memorable. It is not only easy to remember, but also simple to write and does not give rise to mistakes or misunderstandings. Spelling is important. Also, remember that accents count and create different hashtags according to whether we use them or not.
- Place matters. Many users use the comments section to place the hashtags. However, to be really effective, Núria Mañé recommends that you write them directly in the text of the publication.
- Avoid banned hashtags. Instagram "ban" some hashtags and penalize their use. Some are temporarily banned and others permanently, and using them can cause Instagram to shadow you, which is nothing more than blocking your account.

How do I check if a hashtag is banned?

There are tools such as Instavast that can help you find out which hashtags are banned, but you can also do it manually. To do this, from your profile look for the magnifying glass icon and give the option to search for hashtags; if it does not appear among the results, it means that it is permanently banned; if it is only temporarily banned some posts will appear, but you will see an Instagram alert warning that it is temporarily disabled.

How many hashtags should you use?

Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but that doesn't mean you have to use them all. Ideally, you should think of the perfect strategy to optimize the use of hashtags based on the results you want to achieve.

This means that if you want to extract data about where the users come from, it is better to use a few since the analyses do not usually show information about which of the hashtags they come from. Using hashtags with many associated publications, on the other hand, will serve to position your content well.
In this sense, balance is a virtue, so it is advisable to try to combine hashtags with many publications with others with fewer publications to have more visibility.

Monitoring hashtags

In addition to viewing the content of the accounts you follow, Instagram allows you to follow hashtags, whose associated posts will appear in your news feed. Using this feature is interesting to keep track of what content is being published on certain topics or to curate content and share other users' publications on topics related to your brand or the action you are carrying out.

You should keep in mind that both when tracking hashtags and organizing a contest associated with a hashtag on Instagram, only public profile posts can be viewed and monitored.

In the Domestika course Instagram: Contests, Giveaways, and Other Tactics, Núria Mañé will explain everything about hashtags and much more.

English version by @harry_davies.

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