t’s happened to the best of us.
You’ve snapped an amazing photo, the best one you have ever taken! Or maybe you’ve crafted an incredibly witty tweet and you want to share it with the world – your dilemma is the same.
“How do I hashtag this?”
You are absolutely certain that photo you are about to post on Instagram or that tweet you are about to send out into the Twittersphere is pure gold and should net you hundreds of likes and retweets. And follows! If only people would see it.
There’s not much point in creating good content if there is no one around to see and share it, is there?
Don’t be discouraged. We here at Wallery want to help you tag your photos and tweets like a pro. From Instagram to Twitter, let’s take a look at the most used and appropriate hashtags that rule the social media.
By the time you’re done reading this article you will know all about:
- Recurringly popular hashtags
- Evergreen hashtags
- Tools you can use to discover popular and related hashtags in your niche
And you will be able to hashtag your content like a pro, reaching wider audiences and making the most of your social media presence!
Recurringly popular hashtags
For this article, let’s focus on two of the most popular social networks that are most closely associated with hashtags: Instagram and Twitter.
What makes things easier for us is that most of the extremely popular hashtags are universal across many different social networks. What is a popular recurring hashtag on Twitter is often a popular recurring hashtag on Instagram, Vine and Tumblr as well. This isn’t always the case, of course, but most of the time it is.
First of all, let’s explain what we think of when use the term “recurringly popular”.
A recurringly popular hashtag is a hashtag that is periodically trending. In the context of this article – when we say “periodically” we mean “weekly”.
Using recurringly popular hashtags is one of a few great ways you can strengthen your real-time marketing efforts, so it is good to know when a good time to jump the bandwagon is.
Monday hashtags
#Monday is the beginning of the working week for most of us, so it isn’t surprising that, after a weekend spend leisuring, on #MondayMorning a lot of us might be experiencing some #MondayBlues. When we do, we are often in need of some #MondayMotivation to improve our #MondayMood. What better to cheer us up than peeking into the #ManCrushMonday (or #mcm) tag, am I right, ladies?
Not working this Monday? It’s #MondayOff for you, you lucky duck! Go ahead and have some #MondayFun for the rest of us, will you?
Tuesday hashtags
Tuesdays are a bit all over the place! After successfully getting over the Monday blues, people of Instagram and Twitter are ready to face the week before them head-on. We are all about that #TransformationTuesday to show off our fitness transformations, #TravelTuesday to dream (and brag!) about traveling the world, and, well… #TuesdayShoesday. Because a nice pair of shoes will always improve the #TuesdayVibes!
Feeling generous? Share your #TuesdayTip(s) with your followers to help them improve their lifestyle! It’ll be their #TuesdayTreat.
Wednesday hashtags
Who doesn’t love Wednesdays? They mark the middle of the week and that alone is enough to get us excited about them. We love to start our #HumpDay with a dose of melancholy as we think of the #WayBackWednesday. Ah, how different things were back then. Snap back to reality, though! Get through the midweek madness and reward yourself with a #WineWednesday as you proclaim your undying love to your #WomenCrushWednesay (or #wcw). Oh, and we hope you haven’t skipped your #WednesdayWorkout!
Well done! You’ve made it through half of the week, officially! Perhaps now is a great time to share some of your #WednesdayWisdom?
Thursday hashtags
On Thursdays, we #throwback. Get through your #ThursdayTraining quickly, because the main thing in our #ThursdayThoughts is #ThrowbackThursday, and #tbt doesn’t wait for anyone! It’s all about nostalgia and reposting your favorite old images and tweets – the ones you are most proud of. Isn’t it funny how fond we are of the past?
A quick tap into the #ThursdayMotivation tag and we’re ready to tackle that looming Friday.
Friday hashtags
It’s Friday! Yay! …#Friyay, even! Express your #FridayFeeling through photos or tweets – and get ready for an amazing #FridayNight out. Or… Maybe you’d prefer to curl up with a good book and a glass of wine? Don’t worry, you can be social even while opting for the quieter option. Grab your #FridayReads, praise your favorite Twitterers as your #FollowFriday (or #FF), then kick back and relax. After the crazy week you’ve had, you earned it.
#TGIF – Thank God it’s Friday.
Saturday hashtags
Don’t sleep the #SaturdayMorning away! You will miss out on all the fun of your #SaturdayOff! And trust us, you don’t want to miss out on #Caturday – the best of all days. Share the photos of your adorable cat doing adorable things. No one will complain about it, not today! Tweet or Instagram your #SaturdayFun wherever you are – be it #SatudayAfternoon or #SaturdayNight time.
And, remember… #SaturdaysAreForTheBoys. And that #SaturdaySelfie, of course.
Sunday hashtags
#SundayFunday is, as the name suggests, all about having fun. From the early #SundayMorning to the late #SundayNight – this day is all about sharing a perfect #SundaySelfie and spreading the chill #SundayVibes. Enjoy it while it lasts, though. Those pesky Monday blues are just around the corner…
Go on that #SundayWalk, or even a #SundayRun! It’s the best way to prepare for the #SundayBumDay, after all.
You might have noticed that certain types of hashtags repeat themselves throughout the week. For example, #TuesdayVibes and #SundayVibes are both incredibly popular hashtags, but you can get away with #MondayVibes, #WednesdayVibes and so on. Sending out and sharing ‘vibes’ is universal and popular on any day of the week. There are no rules here, just numbers.
Evergreen hashtags
Okay, then, what are evergreen hashtags? It’s quite simple! Evergreen hashtags are hashtags that are popular no matter what day of the week it is and no matter what time of day you are posting.
Evergreen hashtags are, simply put, always popular.
Which evergreen hashtags you will use will depend on what you are posting, and of course, what type of audience you are looking to attract.
Because of the Twitter’s API limitations it is impossible to pull a list of the most popular hashtags from the servers, but Instagram gives us valuable insight into the world of evergreen hashtags simply by using their search. Take a look at this list of top 10 most popular hashtags on Instagram (at the time of us writing this article*):
#love – 944,252,583 1,227,378,728 posts
#instagood – 494,863,785 708,877,783 posts
#photooftheday – 358,705,750 486,840,744 posts
#cute – 329,953,603 406,478,524 posts
#me – 302,433,559 342,410,946 posts
#beautiful – 336,740,202 447,470,460 posts
#happy – 326,123,917 415,417,028 posts
#fashion – 307,627,043 462,158,670 posts
#friends – 241,297,397 300,369,692 posts
#fun – 223,205,767 278,713,198 posts
*This list was updated on the 11th of January, 2018.
What do these hashtags have in common? If you think about it, they are all overwhelmingly positive words. Keep this in mind when crafting your marketing strategy.
Despite the fact we can’t see which the most popular hashtags on Twitter are — because we know the platforms share many of the most popular hashtags it is safe to say that all of these would rank very highly on Twitter as well.
The tools of the trade
There are many tools out there that can help you with your social media strategy. Some are free, while others offer different payment options to consider. In this article we will cover the best and most useful of the tools available – and explain why we love them.
Keyhole.co
Keyhole is a powerful tool which gives you much more than just an idea of which hashtags to use with your image or tweet.
Keyhole will analyze any hashtag across Twitter or Instagram (or both!) and give you detailed stats on how often people are using the hashtag at any given hour, how wide its reach is and even who are the influencers using the hashtag the most. Very useful!
On top of that, if you find yourself in a pickle and don’t know which hashtags to use, Keyhole will help you out by suggesting hashtags related to the one you have been researching.
Trendsmap.com
Trendsmap is a real-time hashtag tracker which will help you track hashtags that are trending and popular at the moment. On the interactive map, you can see which hashtags and keywords people are using on Twitter (and as of recently, Facebook). Trendsmap also offers analytics, alerts, and visualizations of this information.
Hashtagify.me
Hashtagify is a handy tool, and perhaps the best for those times when you have a hashtag in mind, but can’t think of other relevant tags to really make the most of your tweet or image. Based on a single hashtag you let it work with, Hashtagify will crunch the numbers and present you with a list of hashtags relevant to the one you originally chose. For example, when given the #SocialMedia hashtag, Hashtagify returned a list of 10 related to it – all relevant and valuable to extending your reach.
No matter which industry you are in, or whether you are using social media as a private user or a social media manager of a newly-born startup – or an established business, the tools we’ve covered here will definitely give you an edge before the competition and help further your social media game.
Before you go
Before you leave, in a rush to try out all of the wonderful new hashtags you’ve learned here today, let’s consider a question that’s probably crossed your mind while reading this article.
“Should I be using these popular hashtags in my social media posts?”
They are popular – but are they too popular? All of these hashtags are constantly being used by so many people — your content might be buried underneath a pile of newer content in a matter of seconds of using these!
This is true, and it is exactly why you shouldn’t rely only on using popular hashtags to get your content out there. Using relevant and popular hashtags alone won’t be enough to make it big in the world of social media.
But they will help. Combining very niche hashtags with widely popular but relevant hashtags in your posts will definitely help you extend your reach and find wider audiences who are looking for your content – and that’s a great first step to growing your presence on social media!
Note from the author
This article has been updated on the 11th of January, 2018. New popular hashtags have been added to the article itself and the list of the most popular Instagram hashtags has been updated with the newest stats available.