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Feb 14, 2025
Hashtags for Instagram Reels are a crucial part of your social media strategy. Reels with hashtags (compared to those without) bring in 43% more reach and 47% more engagement.
They help you reach a wider audience by showing your content to people who don’t follow your Instagram account yet. But their use stretches way beyond the Explore page. They bring your scheduled Insta Reels to users searching for specific topics and keep you top-of-mind for those who follow hashtags.
In this article, I’ll be running through popular hashtags for 15 widely-used topics, but not before making the case for them as a cornerstone of your social planning. We’ll also explore some best practices for how to wield hashtags efficiently.
An Instagram content strategy that delivers needs to incorporate the best hashtags for your brand, niche, and industry, but in a way that’s authentic and doesn’t come off as spammy. Once you nail down a mix of popular and niche hashtags that you experiment with over time, it’s bound to help your content perform much better.
Hashtags for Instagram Reels work as a way of categorizing what you post. The algorithm understands what your content is about and users get Reels that cater to their interests. But nailing down relevant hashtags also helps with brand positioning and situating your brand in larger conversations. The potential for virality gets a significant boost, too.
Talking to the right people means more brand awareness, a boost in sales, and increased revenue. As you pepper your Instagram captions with a blend of broad hashtags and their niche counterparts, you also see a serious bump in engagement.
This is about more than just volume. A fortunate (and time-tested) mix of popular hashtags can help you build bridges with different audience segments by using the exact same posts. This means you get better ROI while production costs stay the same.
Branded hashtags have exactly zero competition, so you’re essentially defining a micro niche you can own completely. They’re an excellent tool for tracking engagement and understanding how your target audience interacts with your content.
But every hyperspecific Instagram hashtag also functions as a tiny archive, interconnected with thousands of others. You can scroll through well-classified posts and get a feel for social sentiment in real time (while also having a neat record of user-generated content to leverage later).
The knack with Instagram hashtags is to blend research with real-time adjustments and a bit of creative flair. And obviously, the best Instagram Reels (when it comes to performance) are compelling posts in themselves. Top hashtags won’t generate much reach unless the content itself is good, so think of them as help in getting high-quality videos in front of followers and other users.
Instagram SEO should play a part in shaping your strategy. Researching relevant keywords minimizes the guesswork and gets your posts in front of the right target audience faster.
Take a look at the popular Instagram hashtags your competitors use frequently, but only consider incorporating them if they truly match your brand voice. Also make good use of tools like Planable’s Instagram hashtag generator to expand your list, which should include words related to your audience niche, location, brand, and product or service. Keep a list of the best hashtags for each of your content pillars.
It’s important to work time into your schedule specifically for monitoring popular hashtags in your industry. The combo between starting with some strong batches and adding/removing as trends shift will keep your Instagram strategy nice and fresh.
You can find the latest trending hashtags in at least three ways: find lists (such as the one you’re reading right now), use hashtag tracking apps (like Talkwalker or RiteTag), or make use of in-app features. Search for something, then pick the Tags tab and go down the rabbit hole. I recommend following the best hashtags all the way to the original posts, which can in turn direct you to others (plus, your Explore page is also a good bet).
There are no general hashtags everyone should use. Research your target audience to match their vibe while staying away from overused hashtags which might be shadowbanned. I’d also recommend steering clear of choices like #instamood, which don’t say much and have a whiff of belonging in a different era.
Your hashtag strategy should include a mix of popular tags (that are relevant to your brand) and niche ones. This helps you not just reach people, but keep them around. You tap into vital conversations happening in your industry while also building brand awareness.
First of all, if you surpass the limit of 30 hashtags (combined between your caption and first comment, when you split them that way), your post might not go through. There’s also the risk of appearing spammy.
That being said, when it comes to how many hashtags you should use exactly, the commonly held belief that 3-5 or under 10 would be best seems to keep losing ground. Multiple sources cite an increase in engagement that’s proportional to the number of Instagram Reels hashtags you use. The folks at Fanpage Karma cite an increase in reach of 247% for Reels with 10 to 30 hashtags, compared to those with none.
Don’t stick to the same hashtags without gathering data about their strength for your brand specifically. Use Instagram marketing tools to track the performance of individual hashtags via analytics, remove those that underperform, and keep an eye on how engagement-generating ones correlate with the general sentiment in your niche.
Instagram analytics view in Planable
In addition to boosting visibility by making your brand easier to find, branded hashtags simplify tracking and repurposing user-generated content. You gain a clear way of monitoring performance via analytics. Most of all, you build a competitive edge along with brand awareness, all while establishing a consistent presence across multiple social media platforms.
Oh! Another important aspect: you foster a community around your brand as Instagram users find each other and have positive interactions in your comments.
A strong Instagram strategy must include targeted hashtags for the Reels you post. This is especially true since there’s now a Reels tab on the hashtag search results page. But even in the For You tab, Reels are featured pretty prominently among all the other types of Instagram posts. So let’s look at hashtag ideas broken down by industry.
A lot of these are classics but they’re doing great numbers, especially when combined with more niche hashtags:
Instagram trends might change like the colors of a sunset, but you’ve still got reliably popular ones that can balance out brand hashtags:
Popular B2B hashtags reflect a variety of industries and business sizes. The ones below are all reliable.
For the B2C list, you’ll really see that can-do attitude entrepreneurs bring reflected in the word choice:
Some of these hashtags can bring out almost intimidatingly good content from fellow marketers – a treasure trove of inspiration way beyond hashtag research:
When choosing from this list (and all lists), consider how the wording in hashtags fits your brand voice:
As much as hashtags are a sorting mechanism, people do read them. So in the spirit of writing for humans as well as robots, consider how well-known hashtags can be put in an order that tells a tiny story or generally has a logical flow. Not a must, but a nice touch.
While enterprise-level companies dominate a lot of these hashtags, you can make space for yourself. Clever brand hashtags that address pain points head-on are a good bet.
Mixed with counterparts that describe your ingredients and signature dishes, the hashtags below can help create all sorts of cozy, quirky, and efficient combos:
So many of these have long-lasting communities already congregating around them. Be respectful of marginalized voices, keep an eye out for the inside jokes, and you could truly energize parts of these communities.
These hashtags work great when blended with those that describe workouts for people who can be extra-overwhelmed, dealing with unique challenges, or struggling with some aspect of their health. It’s such a personal subject; deep, empathetic research into your audience will increase engagement significantly.
Combine these with hyperlocal hashtags that describe destinations in detail (in terms of flora, fauna, scenery, and so on).
Just like with the tech list above, you can make a splash even when huge brands dominate popular hashtags. Unique visuals and a good choice of music will help.
These hashtags work well both when used in earnest or with a little bit of irony. One thing’s for sure: people love a good quote.
It’s hardly a surprise that memes dominate this list. Tap into rising meme trends (with authenticity!) and the potential for increased engagement plus virality goes through the roof.
Yes. Hashtags for Instagram Reels help boost engagement and reach a wider audience. Your posts become easier to discover and the specific Reel format looks very eye-catching on hashtag pages. Established accounts might get decent engagement even without bothering with trending hashtags, but for all accounts under 300,000 followers, they’re strongly recommended.
It depends. While some sources recommend 3 to 5 hashtags for Instagram Reels (the same as for posts), and several large brands stick to this number, multiple experiments by seasoned social media folks have proven otherwise. More hashtags can = more reach. I recommend experimenting with different hashtag volume to find what works best for your content.
This rule refers to finding hashtags that reflect the what, who, and why of your brand. Reels hashtags should illustrate what your brand can do, who the audience is, and what pain points it solves. It’s also used as the 3×3 hashtag strategy, which is the same, just with three hashtags per type. Their order makes no difference to the algorithm, but for humans, it’s best to sort by relevance.
Irina is a freelance senior copywriter & content writer with an advertising agency background. If she’s not rummaging for good synonyms, she’s probably watching a sitcom or listening to radio dramas with plucky amateur detectives. She loves collage, doing crosswords on paper and shazamming the birds outside her window.
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