Published on June 15, 2022
12 min to read
923+ Best, Most Popular, Viral Hashtags for Instagram this 2023
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Searching for viral hashtags for Instagram has never been easier.
Instagram hashtags are useful for branding, PR, community building, and user engagement.
They let businesses, influencers, and individual users alike chip in their thoughts about a topic—be it an event, brand promotion, cultural issue, and everything in between.
And that’s just regular hashtags…
Viral or trending hashtags are on another level.
Viral hashtags are trending Instagram hashtags that generated a quick surge of interest in a specific topic.
They boost the searchability of posts, making them the perfect complement to content pillars for Instagram.
Continue reading to find the best hashtags agencies can use for Instagram marketing campaigns.
Table of contents
What You’ll Learn:
- Importance of using viral hashtags
- Top viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best fitness-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best marketing-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best viral influencer hashtags
- Best food-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best tech-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best beauty-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best viral make-up hashtags
- Best fashion-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best health-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best travel-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best pet-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best wedding-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best student-related viral hashtags
- Best contest-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best music-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best parenting-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best photography-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best viral selfie hashtags
- Best viral nature hashtags
- Best finance-related viral hashtags for Instagram
- Best challenge-related viral hashtags
- Hashtag research tips and tricks
- Making the most out of the best, viral hashtags: Popular hashtag tips for agencies
- FAQs when using the best, viral hashtags for IG
- Dominate Instagram marketing with the best, viral hashtags
Importance of Using Viral Hashtags
If regular hashtags represent topics, viral hashtags embody trends that get a ton of attention from social media users.
Using them in your client’s content supercharges views and interactions, including likes, shares, and comments.
For example, “#instadaily” is a popular hashtag with over 594 million posts.
Injecting them in your client’s post will help it become searchable to people who use that hashtag.
Here are a few Instagram hashtag statistics worth mentioning:
- A single hashtag can increase Instagram post interactions by 29%.
- 70% of hashtags on Instagram are branded hashtags.
- Using 11+ hashtags in a single post leads to 79% more interactions.
Aside from increasing content visibility, viral hashtags also help your agency establish your client’s brand relevance and authority in their niche.
Let’s say your client is a travel agency or blogger that specializes in travel deals and money-saving hacks.
Consistently using the hashtag “#budgettravel” will ramp up their visibility to users who need affordable travel ideas.
More views lead to higher engagement and follower count.
These numbers, in turn, will give your client’s Instagram profile a search boost—further improving discoverability and user engagement.
How can you tell if a hashtag is “viral”?
When it comes to social media and content marketing as a whole, virality is relative.
A post that generated a thousand shares and likes can be considered viral in a small niche.
In big niches like fashion, celebrity gossip, and sports, posts need tens of thousands of shares to be called viral.
[Must Read: Best Questions to Ask on Instagram Story for Brands]
Pro Tip: Automate First Comments With Hashtags
One of the caveats of using hashtags is that they look spammy when used excessively.
To keep your post captions clean, use Vista Social to automate hashtags as the first comment in your Instagram posts.
To do this, head to your dashboard and click ‘Publish a single post’ from the “Publish” sub-menu.
Create your Instagram posts as usual by selecting an image and writing a caption.
Below the post preview, type or paste the hashtags you want to use into the “Leave first comment” field. This will be automatically posted once the Instagram post goes live.
Automating the first comment is a great way to include more relevant hashtags to your post and attract more users.
You just need the right hashtags related to your niche and content strategy.
Without further ado, here are viral Instagram hashtags that will help your clients reach more people and attract followers.
Feel free to copy and paste these popular Instagram hashtags in your post captions.
[Must Read: 431+ Best One-Word Instagram Captions to COPY & PASTE!]
Ready to give your content workflow and posts a major upgrade? Try AI Assistant powered by ChatGPT today! 🤖💙
Hashtag Research Tips and Tricks
Instagram hashtag research is critical to finding the best hashtags for your client’s posts and campaigns.
It can also help you come up with new hashtag ideas and find the latest, buzzworthy hashtags to include in your client’s posts.
Some of the effective ways to amplify your IG hashtag research includes the following tactics:
- Look into influencers. Many popular influencers have nailed their Instagram hashtag strategy. It makes them some of the best sources of trending and even niche hashtags that you can snag for your clients.
- Check out competitors. It doesn’t hurt to look at the hashtag strategy that your client’s direct competitors implement. For instance, follow hashtags and find trends in the hashtags the competitors use and leverage it to get ideas for hashtags to your client’s list.
- Explore Twitter. Twitter is a great space to find relevant hashtags. Scope out Twitter’s trending topics section to get an idea about the popular topics people are sharing and look at the hashtags included in the posts. Adapt the relevant ones for your client’s Instagram posts.
- Stay up to date. Keep up to date with the latest trends and changes in social media algorithms. It helps you stay ahead of the curve and ensure your client’s hashtag strategy is always relevant and effective. Also, consider using reliable Instagram hashtag generators that can give you popular hashtags quickly.
Additionally, regularly monitor your client’s hashtag performance using social media analytics tools.
The right tool can help you identify which hashtags are generating the most engagement from the targeted audience. It allows you to adjust your client’s hashtag strategy accordingly to help them gain massive exposure.
Popular Hashtag Tips for Agencies
Hashtags and Instagram posts have a symbiotic relationship.
Trending and related hashtags help posts get discovered. Well-performing posts, in turn, can skyrocket the reach and popularity of hashtags.
The hashtags above will help your clients connect with more Instagram users with the right strategies.
If you want to go further and develop a unique branded hashtag for them, here are some ways to bolster its popularity:
1. Concoct the perfect hashtag for your campaign
The top hashtags on Instagram have a few things in common: they’re simple, easy to remember, and aligned with the brand’s identity.
However, there’s no one-size-fits-all blueprint to follow when creating a branded Instagram hashtag from scratch.
Agencies and brands can only experiment and borrow inspiration from other companies that did it well, until they get the results they’re looking for after analyzing the data generated by their marketing campaigns.
For example, branded hashtags are sometimes derived from relevant phrases or words that their target audience can relate to.
At other times, they use recycled words from the brand’s name or slogan.
In some cases, branded hashtags are created specifically for a marketing campaign.
A great example would be the “#DoUsAFlavor” hashtag by Lays, which is used in their campaign to crowdsource their next official flavor.
2. Use the best, branded hashtags to spur user interactions
Branded hashtags work great with social media interaction posts, like hashtag contests, response videos, and surveys.
Simply ask your client’s audience to use your branded hashtag if they want to participate.
Branded hashtags are originally created by companies in line with an ongoing or new marketing campaign.
Nike, for example, uses a hashtag based on their globally-renowned slogan, “Just Do It.”
[Must Read: 142+ Instagram Poll Questions to Ask Your Followers]
By adding interactivity into the mix, your client’s Instagram content can generate up to two times more engagement than traditional posts with static images. This will lead to an exponential uptick in your hashtag’s reach.
3. Spread your branded hashtag through influencers
Influencers on Instagram leverage their social media reach to help businesses push their brand in front of a wider audience.
With the go signal from your client, collaborations with influencers can help spread their branded hashtag—along with the brand itself—like wildfire.
Instagram streamlines influencer marketing with features like pre-approved product tagging in Instagram branded content tools.
Some examples of collaboration opportunities with Instagram influencers are:
- Give them free, “review” units of your products in exchange for a mention.
- Broadcast a live Q&A or interview.
- Dare influencers to participate in a challenge.
- Do a collaborative giveaway.
- Ask to collaborate outside of Instagram and on other social media networks (through the influencer’s other profiles).
[Must Read: How to Get Followers on Instagram Without Following]
4. Mix up your content strategy
There are a number of ways to promote your client’s branded hashtag on Instagram. The most common, of course, is to embed them into posts for the Instagram community to see.
To maximize its chances of being seen, mix things up and experiment with other Instagram content formats.
See if you can generate more engagement with Instagram Reels, Stories, and carousels.
The key is to use a consolidated social media management platform like Vista Social.
Doing so lets you schedule Instagram content in various formats while keeping content analytics within a few clicks away.
With Vista Social’s reports, you can determine which of your Instagram content types are effective in getting engagement.
It can also help you track engagements generated by your hashtags.
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Get Started NowAbout the Author
Content Writer
Jimmy Rodela is a social media and content marketing consultant with over 9 years of experience, with work appearing on sites such as Business.com, Yahoo, SEMRush, and SearchEnginePeople. He specializes in social media, content marketing, SaaS, small business strategy, marketing automation, and content development.
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