You’ve probably heard of hashtags by now.
Maybe you don’t really know what they are but you realize they are important.
Maybe you know what they are but aren’t sure how to use them.
Maybe you know how to use them, but you need ideas for how to be more effective using them.
Wherever you are starting with hashtags, as usual, we’ve got your back.
What are Hashtags?
Let’s start at the beginning: What are hashtags?
Hashtags are a series of numbers, letters, and/or emojis following the “#” symbol.
For example: #pastorlife
When you hashtag (it’s a verb too!) your Instagram posts or stories, it helps Facebook to categorize your photo into a group of photos using the same hashtag. For example, if someone takes a photo of a dog in the church and hashtags it “#churchdog” when they post it on Instagram, they can click on that hashtag, and easily connect with all other Instagram photos that have been hashtagged with “#churchdog.”
This hashtag will automatically become a clickable link whenever you post a series of numbers, letters, and/or emojis after the number sign (with no spaces!).
Why Use Hashtags?
Using hashtags adds just another way for people to discover your content, church, and faith beliefs.
Some people may find your church by going directly to your Instagram page and following it. That’s great if they were already looking for your page.
But others can discover your page through the hashtags you use.
For example, you can use community-related hashtags that people may be perusing for other reasons. Check out the Instagram accounts of the other active local businesses in your community. What locational hashtags are they using?
If there are popular ones, consider adding them onto your posts from time to time. This might just connect someone to you who just happened to be looking at community hashtags after seeing the ice cream place use it first.
Another way people might discover you through your use of hashtags is if they are following a specific hashtag. Yes, the same way you can follow accounts and see all of their posts, you can follow specific hashtags and see certain posts tagged with that hashtag.
Hashtags do more than just help other people discover your church, though. They can also draw connections between events and people within your community.
If you’ve ever attended a conference or event, chances are they may have had their own hashtag to connect everyone who is attending. This works when people post photos or videos at the event and hashtag their post with the tag of that specific event.
You can follow this same practice with your church too. Whether it’s a smaller event or a regular weekly activity, you can connect people through the use of hashtags.
For example, if you have a Saturday night worship service that is fairly different from your regular worship service, and let’s say your church’s name is St. Stephen’s… you can make the hashtag SaturdaysatStStephens OR SatsatStStephs or StStephenSaturday or really anything you want. Then when you post a worship photo with that hashtag, people can click on that hashtag and automatically see ALLLL the Saturday night content you’ve ever posted and hashtagged. This can give them a broader perspective of your ministry over time.
The same thing can be done with Bible studies, sermon quotes, or even any/all church posts overall. You can have specific tags for weekend retreat or even tags for each ministry group.
The point is, when people post videos or photos online and use the specific hashtag for their activity, they will immediately connected with everyone else attending that event and posting content. This draws connections and builds relationships… both of which are huge aspects of why we do church.
How to Use Hashtags Effectively
This is an important section.
Why?
Because if you use hashtags right, you could extend your reach in extending the Gospel incredibly.
Use them wrong? You may actually get less reach thanks to Instagram’s algorithm.
This could mean the difference between having dozens or even thousands more seeing the Good News posts you share vs. your own followers not seeing your content as often.
The biggest reason Instagram penalizes accounts for poor hashtag use is because they don’t want to promote spam. Whether they think you’re a robot or just someone not putting in authentic effort, I’m not sure. Either way, if Instagram sees you posting the same exact set of hashtags on every post, it just might start decreasing your outreach ability.
The moral of the story here is to mix up the hashtags you use.
Once you have a set of go-to hashtags that have the right audience for you, you can select which ones you will use for each post from this list – taking care not to use the same set each time.
You can use up to 30 hashtags on each Instagram post and up to 10 on each story, but the jury is still out on whether you should use all of the hashtags you are able to or not.
Some marketers encourage using as many as possible – the more reach the better! Others say it is better to use around 10 or 11, with still others saying use even less.
That means you get to play around a bit. See what works best for you and keep an eye on your analytics to see how your hashtags are helping your posts get in front of more eyes.
To keep their hashtags from being an eye sore, many people put their hashtags in the first comment of their post. In fact, they will add three lines with just one period or bullet point or dash on each line so that the tags themselves are hidden unless you click on the “see more” button. The hashtags are still functionally connected to the post, but people will only see them if they look for them.
How Do You Find Hashtags to Use?
There are a few ways you can discover hashtags and evaluate them.
Initially, you will want to pay attention to what hashtags other users in your niche are using. This could mean:
- Other churches in your denomination
- Other churches in your area
- The local community
- Faith leaders you connect with
Once you get to know a few of the hashtags being used by these folks, decide whether or not they would be a good fit for your community. If not, you can still use these hashtags to find other related hashtags. You do this by clicking on the hashtag itself and looking for “related hashtags” listed on the hashtag’s page. Perhaps one of these hashtags would be a better fit for your community.
When trying to find quality hashtags to use, you do not necessarily want to always go for the ones that have the most posts. You can determine the amount of posts on each individual hashtag page. Sometimes when you are searching tags, you will see this number pop up underneath the hashtag as well.
Some digital ministry marketers recommend you use hashtags with between a couple thousand and a couple hundred thousand. Other marketers recommend you use a solid mix between small, medium, and large hashtags. That means no matter how many posts each tag has, you can use it if it fits you as long as you make sure it is accompanied by other smaller and larger hashtags.
How Will Hashtags Affect Your Follow Numbers?
Using hashtags increases your reach which is highly likely to increase your following online.
It may take time and effort as you tweak your usage of various hashtags to determine the right amount. Even then, be flexible and anticipate change over time.
As a reminder, do not just post the exact same set of hashtags over and over unless you want Instagram to penalize your reachability.
What Else Do I Need to Know?
Glad you asked!
First, you need to know that if your Instagram profile is set to private (meaning, only the people who you approve as followers have access to your posts), only your approved followers will see your posts, even if you put hashtags on them.
This may be helpful to know if your church account is set to private or if you encounter someone who is frustrated that their hashtag Bible study posts aren’t viewable to other church members.
Next, remember that symbols do not work in hashtags.
That means if you try to use an apostrophe, #itwon’twork. For example, if you tried to hashtag that phrase, it would just hashtag “#itwon” with “’twork” trailing behind.
Finally, you can analyze how your hashtags are helping your post reach within the Insights feature.
When you click on “Insights” under each post and scroll up, you will see how many people saw your post due to the hashtags you used on it. This will help you better understand how effective you are being with the hashtags you chose.
That’s it!
Now it’s time to go out there and put all this new wisdom to work. If this was helpful for you, please share it with a friend and subscribe to our emails for exclusive future resources to make sure your church doesn’t miss the BIGGEST opportunity to share the love of Jesus yet.
We brought the knowledge, now it’s your turn to put it into action.
Peace!