There are so many questions when it comes to hashtags. No wonder many interior designers are confused about how to use them correctly and prefer to stay away from them.
In this post, we will address all of them one by one.
Want an ultimate shortcut? Just get our Hashtag Guide for interior designers which contains over 1500 home decor hashtags to increase your reach and attract ideal clients.
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The Basics Of Hashtags For Interior Designers
What Are Hashtags?
Hashtags are tags with the hash symbol # used across various social media platforms. People use them mostly on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, but they can be also found on other platforms such as LinkedIn, Youtube, and Houzz.
In this article, we’ll focus on hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
How To Use Hashtags On Social Media
The Number Of Hashtags Per Post
The number of hashtags you should use differs per social media platform. The differences can be quite vast so do not think of hashtags as something that you can just copy-paste from platform to platform.
On Instagram, the generally recommended number is up to 30 hashtags per post.
For Facebook, there is no generally recommended amount but more than two might look spammy.
Differences Between Hashtags Across Social Media Platforms
Whether and how you use hashtags differs from platform to platform. Hashtags on Instagram work differently from hashtags on Facebook. If you try a cookie-cutter approach and just copy-paste the same hashtags across all your social media accounts, not only you won’t use hashtags effectively, you might hurt your engagement.
Let’s have a look at how you can use hashtags correctly on your Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest profiles.
Hashtags On Instagram
Instagram is currently the best social media platform for using hashtags.
The maximum number of hashtags on Instagram is 30 hashtags per post. If you use too many hashtags, you might be perceived as a spammy user. If you use only a few, you are not making use of Instagram hashtags to their full potential.
In general, hashtags are used on Instagram to increase the reach of a post and you can do so with a combination of popular and more niche hashtags.
Instagram Hashtags In A Comment VS In The Caption
At the moment of publishing this blog post (early 2021), it doesn’t matter whether you post your hashtags in a separate comment or as part of your caption. The biggest difference is in the aesthetic but both will work the same in terms of how searchable your content will be.
If you are using free scheduling software to plan your Instagram content, chances are you can’t schedule in advance to post the first comment containing your hashtags. In that case, you will have to do it manually after the content is published.
Paid versions of some software, like Planoly or Later, will allow you to schedule the first comment together with your post.
Here you can see what would hashtags in the first comment look like.
The second way of posting hashtags, i.e. as part of your caption, might be easier if you just want to batch schedule your content ahead and not worry about manual commenting.
If you would still like to visually separate the hashtags from the caption, you can do so by using a straight dotted line just like we did here:
Hashtags On Instagram Stories
There are several ways how to use hashtags in Instagram stories. You can place a hashtag sticker or type them as text. Both work the same in terms of how searchable your content is.
Having said that, even if your Instagram profile is set to public, using hashtags in your stories doesn’t necessarily mean they will come up in public searches. Instagram’s algorithm will consider engagement and interactions with your story before it includes it in the aggregated story selection.
You can use up to 10 hashtags in Insta stories. If you decide to use several hashtags, you might be concerned about how untidy your story will look. The good news is, that you can ‘hide’ hashtags in Insta stories. If you are typing your hashtags with the text tool, you can change the color of the text to make it blend with the background.
While changing the color is not possible with the hashtag stickers, you can make them as small as you like, effectively hiding them away. Another method is to place a different sticker or a gif on top of your hashtag. Suddenly, the hashtag is nowhere to be seen!
Hashtags On Instagram Reels
You can use hashtags on Instagram reels, just like you can with Insta stories. If you have a public Instagram account (i.e., a business or creator profile), sharing reels with hashtags can make them also appear on dedicated pages for those hashtags.
If you want to see who else is using the same hashtag, tap on the hashtag to see what other posts and reels come up. You can also do this the other way around – when typing a hashtag in the search bar, Instagram will show you top posts and reels with this hashtag.
As with all other content on Instagram, keep in mind that hashtags are great to improve the reach of your posts, but they will not improve engagement if the content isn’t great in the first place.
Hashtags are great to improve the reach of your posts, but they will not improve engagement if the content isn’t great in the first place.
Using Interior Design Hashtags To Get Likes On Instagram
If you are wondering how to use hashtags to get likes on Instagram, take a pause. Hashtags help your content be more searchable, i.e. it helps more people to find it. Whether people will engage with your post, save it, or comment on it, is another matter and not as much related to hashtags.
If your content isn’t helpful, relevant, and interesting to your potential clients, it will not get the engagement you wish for, no matter what hashtags you are using.
How To Choose Hashtags On Instagram
One of the most common questions we have when it comes to hashtags is, “Which hashtags to use?”
When you search hashtags on Instagram, you can see that some are way more popular than others. There is value in using both, highly popular and niche hashtags, but each kind serves a different function.
Popular hashtags are used by very broad audiences which helps with exposure. This exposure, though, might mean people who have a very low chance to become your client as they might be living on the other side of the world.
Much fewer people will see niche hashtags, but if chosen well, they can help you target your ideal clients much better. This is especially the case with location-based hashtags and niche terms based on client interests (#bathinbedroom, anyone?).
If chosen well, niche hashtags can help you target your ideal clients much better.
The best strategy is to combine all types of hashtags, from highly popular (to help you rank in the feed) to less popular (to narrow down your audience) and some niche ones (to target potential clients), together with location-based hashtags.
Popular Hashtags For Interior Designers
The definition of a ‘popular’ hashtag is somewhat fluid, but we include those that are used on more than a hundred thousand posts. For interior design, it is hashtags such as #interiordesign (110+ mil posts on Instagram), #interiordesigner (13+ mil posts on Instagram), #homedecor (86+ mil posts on Instagram), and many others.
Niche Hashtags For Interior Designers
On the other hand, hashtags that are used on fewer than a hundred thousand posts are considered niche hashtags. This can be anything from #bohodecorating (68k posts on Instagram) to #darkwalls (74k posts on Instagram) to #londoninteriorstylist (1,500+ posts on Instagram)
You can niche down to hashtags that have a few hundred or double-digit numbers of posts. Just make sure the hashtags you are using are relevant and likely to be used by your ideal client. No use in finding obscure, industry-related hashtags that have only a couple of posts because your potential clients have no idea about them.
Don’t try to educate your potential clients with your hashtags. Always use hashtags that your clients are using.
Branded Interior Design Hashtags
There is one exception to the rule of using hashtags that your clients are using. Brandedhashtags are hashtags that contain your brand name (duh!).
Usually, branded hashtags are used as part of larger, often global marketing campaigns to increase brand recognition.
As a small interior design business, the best use of branded hashtags would be in contests, for example in an Instagram giveaway. The effect is two-fold: one, it will help your brand exposure, and two, on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram you will be easily able to track the usage of your branded hashtag.
Getting Your Hashtags Noticed On Instagram
How do you get your interior design hashtags noticed on Instagram? If you are using branded hashtags, make sure they are not overly complicated and easy to remember. And of course, they should be easy to type as you don’t want to be trying to track all the misspellings of your original hashtags.
Shadow-ban And Banned Hashtags
Being shadowbanned means your posts won’t come up under some hashtags even though your content is fresh and original. This usually happens when using a hashtag that is currently on the banned list.
There are tools you can use to check which hashtags are currently banned, such as IQ Hashtags.
The banned list changes over time so it’s always good to check your hashtags before posting, just to be on the safe side.
Seeing Whether Your Hashtags Work On Instagram
How do you find out whether your hashtags work? In the case of branded hashtags it’s fairly easy – just type your hashtag in the search bar and see how many posts that contain it will come up. This way you can also see actual posts and people who used your hashtags.
If you want to see whether your hashtag groups work, there is another way. A word of warning, this method works only with business profiles as you need to have access to Instagram analytics (Insights).
Under each of your posts (in the post view, not in the feed or the profile page), there is a little blue text View Insights. Tap on it and you will see all analytics related to this particular post: how many people have seen the post (reach), how many people liked it, commented on it, bookmarked it, and sent this post to someone else. If you scroll down you can also see how many people visited your profile or your website after seeing your post.
Scroll further down and you will see a rundown of all impressions that your post had, including those gained from hashtags. In other words, here you can see how many people discovered your post by searching a certain hashtag.
If you are using hashtag groups, this is a good way to test which groups attract more users. A caveat – usually the more popular a post is, the more exposure it generally gets. Meaning that if your post does generally well (i.e. it gets comments, likes, saves, and sends), Instagram will be inclined to show it to even more people.
So don’t be surprised if two posts with the same hashtags get different numbers. On Instagram, it’s the full picture that matters, not just partial components like hashtags or captions.
Hashtag Groups
Let’s say you carefully researched and gathered all your relevant hashtags. You probably have many more than the maximum amount recommended per post. So, how do you make sure you utilize hashtags to the maximum of their potential?
What we like to do (and recommend to interior designers) is to create hashtag groups and use those in the rotation when posting something on social media.
This is especially relevant for Instagram, where hashtags are crucial for exposure and there are tens or even hundreds that might be highly relevant to your business.
You can see below what some of our hashtag groups look like in Planoly.
You can either save your hashtag groups in a note app or a Google document, or you can use scheduling software such as Planoly with the hashtag group function. The form of your hashtag groups doesn’t matter as long as it allows you to post relevant hashtags easily.
Hashtags On Facebook
Do hashtags work on Facebook?
The answer is yes and no. Yes, you can use hashtags on Facebook but they don’t work in the same way as they do on Instagram. They are not as crucial to making your content more searchable as is the case on Instagram.
What is then the point of hashtags on Facebook, you might ask?
On Facebook, you can attach hashtags to your post, i.e. in your caption. Posting them in a separate comment doesn’t work the same way as it does on Instagram. And while you can put a hashtag in the Facebook search bar and see content come up where this hashtag was used, not many users actually do that.
Hashtags have a bit better use in Facebook groups. There they highlight the most popular/talked about posts within the group and make it easier for group members to search for content associated with the hashtag.
Who Can See Hashtags On Facebook?
Who can see your hashtags on Facebook depends on your privacy settings, as is the case with all Facebook posts. In other words, hashtags will be publicly searchable in all public posts you make but not in your personal posts where the privacy is set to friends-only.
Hashtags On Facebook For Business
So, do hashtags increase reach on Facebook? Depends on how you use them.
Let’s say you do a contest in a Facebook group. To participate, users need to post a photo with a short description. Telling them to use a specific hashtag (for example one that includes your brand) will make it easier for you to track all the contest entries, plus, if the contest gets enough traction, the hashtag will be then shown in the ‘Popular topics in this group’ section. This, in turn, may encourage other group members to use or look up this hashtag.
Having said that, it depends very much on your audience whether using hashtags on Facebook will be of any value. For audiences that are a bit less tech-savvy, hashtags might be just confusing and not encourage further conversations.
For audiences that are a bit less tech-savvy, hashtags might be confusing.
How To Track Hashtags On Facebook
You can find a handful of hashtag tracking tools out there just by searching on Google. Before signing up for a paid service, ask yourself whether this is really needed for your business. If you are a large brand with an audience of millions of fans and run campaigns that use a particular branded hashtag, it makes sense to use these tools to keep track of how much the hashtag is used.
But as a relatively smaller interior design business, your money and time might be better spent elsewhere.
How Do You Find Trending Hashtags On Facebook?
Unfortunately, social listening tools for Facebook are not as sophisticated as they are for other platforms when it comes to hashtags.
In general, when posting hashtags on Facebook, people don’t necessarily stick to trending hashtags. For this reason, adding hashtags that are only marginally relevant to your post to increase exposure simply doesn’t work on Facebook. Instead, Facebook hashtags are mostly about the relevance to the post.
On Facebook, people don’t always stick to trending hashtags.
And that is what you should be focusing on if you choose to use hashtags on Facebook – pick one or two that are directly relevant to your content but do not try to recreate your Instagram hashtag strategy here.
Hashtags On Pinterest
Although hashtags do exist on Pinterest, the platform has been discouraging their use for quite some time now.
In fact, hashtags work similarly to keywords on Pinterest. You can use them to look up a certain topic in Pinterest’s search bar but there won’t be much difference between using hashtags as opposed to just using a keyword without the hash symbol.
If you decide to use hashtags on Pinterest, you can put them in the descriptions of your pins or pin titles.
As opposed to other social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, hashtags in descriptions are not clickable. Nor will looking up hashtags in the search bar return the latest pins that are actually using that hashtag
Is there any reason why you should be using hashtags on Pinterest, then?
Well, Pinterest’s algorithm is always evolving and the functionality around hashtags has changed a couple of times already since the platform was established. So there is a chance that there could be a return to hashtags having a more important function in the future. If that happens, having the right hashtags already in place could save you hours of work. Otherwise, you would have to go over your older pins and add them to the descriptions.
If you’d rather focus on what works right now, putting a lot of time into hashtags on Pinterest might not be the best use of your energy.
Instagram’s native search function works very well for finding suitable hashtags. After typing your hashtag into the search bar, you will not only see how popular it is (i.e. how many posts contain this hashtag) but also similar hashtags, which is a great function for getting new hashtag ideas. You can also always look at other Instagram accounts to see what hashtags they are using and use this as a start of your research.
Tools such as Ritetag will tell you how popular a chosen hashtag is, whether or not it’s currently banned on Instagram (remember the shadowban we talked about earlier?), give you ideas for similar hashtags and some can even give you detailed reports with details such as who are the most popular users of this hashtag.
Some functionality might be only available for Twitter hashtags though and if you are not a global organization with large marketing campaigns spanning several countries, the detailed reports might be more than you need.
Both of the above are handy standalone tools, but sometimes you just want a more immediate, done-for-you solution.
We went on to scour the best hashtags for interior accounts on Instagram so you could save time and focus on building your business. The result is more than 1500 top interior design hashtags and home decor hashtags for designers, stylists, stagers, and decorators.
All the hashtags are organized in categories and carefully researched to fit an interior design business. All that’s left to do is to download the guide, pick the hashtags that fit your brand the most, and start posting.
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