New Report Highlights That Instagram Hashtags Don't Affect Post Views, Based on 75 Million Posts

Do hashtags actually help to improve the reach of your posts on Instagram? The pervading belief has been that they do, but recently, Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri poured cold water on the hashtag debate by noting that hashtags don’t really help views. Instagram hashtags aren’t designed to maximize distribution, necessarily, with the real focus being on categorizing content to better connect users with what they’re looking for. But still, that should also help to improve reach, right? Do hashtags really not influence post views? To get some answers, the team at Socialinsider recently analyzed over 75 million Instagram posts published between March 2021 and March 2022, to see what the data says about the relationship between Instagram hashtags and post views. The research shows that the number of hashtags an Instagram post has does not influence post distribution. As you can see in the graphic below, there are no significant differences in the average engagement rate by impressions values of the Instagram posts analyzed, despite the number of hashtags. The highest average engagement rate by impressions (3.41%) is generated by posts with 3-4 hashtags. This comes as no surprise – Instagram itself has previously noted that keeping between 3-5 hashtags is the best strategy to adopt…
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