We all know the power and value of Instagram hashtags. They are heavily searched and can provide such powerful results for your business when used effectively. But, they have only ever been “active” on mobile devices. Clicking on Instagram hashtags on the website or desktop version didn’t do anything for you.
Until now!
Now, you can view a gallery or page of results for any hashtag on Instagram on the website (or desktop) version of Instagram. Yes, they are slowly making the website version of Instagram more consistent with what we’re used to seeing on the mobile platform.
Now you can click on any (blue, active) hashtag on an Instagram post and you will be taken directly to a dedicated page of posts tagged with that hashtag.
You will see the big banner collage that we are accustomed to seeing on the desktop version of Instagram. This collage will randomly generate and switch images just like the profile collages. The hashtag will be listed just beneath the collage. And the number of posts associated with the hashtag will appear to the right of the screen.
And, if you don’t want to click through the direct hashtag link, you can go directly to any hashtag gallery by typing in the direct page link. It’s really easy!
Just type in this link: https://instagram.com/explore/tags/ and then include the hashtag (without the #) after. For example: https://instagram.com/explore/tags/jennstrends/
You will immediately be taken to the page with all the posts for that hashtag.
It’s honestly that easy to now view hashtags on the desktop/website version of Instagram.
And, this just brings up the importance of Instagram hashtags again. If you’re not actively using hashtags on Instagram, you’re missing a huge opportunity to reach new audiences and create a brand around your content on Instagram. If you want to learn more about using hashtags on Instagram, read these two previous posts I’ve written:
How to Create a Hashtag Strategy on Instagram
How and When to Use Hashtags on Instagram
I hope this helps make Instagram hashtags more powerful for you and that you find even more ways to use hashtags for your business!
Thanks for this blog post! I am desperately trying to convince my organization that they need to get into Instagram. Knowing that it is desktop-hashtag-friendly now is going help in the ongoing debate. Love what you do!
Awesome! I’m glad this will help you convince them, Julia 🙂 I love the motivation to get your organization active on Instagram!
BTW, if you want to send me an email ([email protected]) with information on what your organization does, I’d be happy to give you some tips on how else to motivate them to the power of IG.
Thanks for this blog post … this is phantastic.
Best regards from Germany
Dani
Thanks Dani! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
Do you have any suggestions on how to find the most popular hashtags a certain group of people would be using? For example, say I’m looking for high school students who got accepted to a specific university. I’ve tried searching things like #UMass19 but it didn’t generate many results.
Hi Monica,
I’m honestly not aware of a good tool to search for hashtags in that way. There are a few things out there, but they just pull a bunch of random, popular hashtags for major categories. I would recommend trying to search within IG for something related to that university (for example #UMass) and seeing what other popular search terms appear in the search query. Also, look at some of the posts for that hashtag and see what most people are using.
I would think your hashtag would be a good one, but there just may not be that many people using it yet. You could also try #UMass15 (maybe the students think of the current year, not the graduating class?)… Sorry I can’t be of more help on this.
If you’re looking for real-time use of hashtags there’s http://tagify.io – it pulls the most recent 500 photos from Instagram with the given hashtag and recommends tags based on relatedness and popularity (it shoots for not overly popular tags that are highly related)
Thanks for the tip Ian. It looks like a very handy tool!