In the course of the study, Socialinsider analyzed about 650 thousand posts in 6784 business accounts with different numbers of subscribers. The main task was to find out where it is better to place hashtags when publishing a post on Instagram: in the caption to the post or in the first comment. It is believed that placing hashtags in the comments gives the post a neater, more elegant and complete look, while a large number of hashtags in the signature is associated with spam. But does it work?

Results, 87% brands prefer to use hashtags in their post captions

Moreover, the vast majority of posts on Instagram (93.8%) contain hashtags in the signature.

Profiles with up to 100K followers get a greater reach of posts and engagement when posting hashtags in the signature. Regardless of the number of followers. And for profiles with more than 100K followers, the difference is practically erased, and even the opposite is possible: posts with a hashtag in the first comment received an increase in reach of 15.9% - for posts with a hashtag in the signature, this figure is 14.8%.

Most brands use 7 hashtags or are already reaching the maximum allowed 30. In the first comment, no more than 2 hashtags are often used.

Results: how many hashtags and where to place them when posting on Instagram - depending on the number of followers

For profiles with up to 5K followers, 6 hashtags in the signature are most effective. For profiles with 5K to 10K followers, use 5 hashtags in the first comment

For profiles with 10K to 50K subscribers, 2 hashtags in the signature are most effective, but it makes no sense to come up with more than 15

None of the posts containing the full 30 hashtags (or close to 30) received the best results, regardless of profile size.

Posts with hidden hashtags in the title are more effective

So hide them. Or publish them openly in the first comment to the post. To hide hashtags for a post, simply leave some space between the message in the title and the hashtag so that they are shown only if the user clicks "more". Alternatively, put a series of vertical dots and copy the hashtags below them, at the bottom.

And on average, accounts with less than 100K followers get a little more likes and comments when posting hashtags in the first comment