What You Need To Know About Hashtags As A Promotional Strategy

Hashtags are a crucial element of any business’s Instagram strategy, but you must check which ones you’re using. You don’t want to mistakenly use a banned hashtag, since it may ruin your whole Instagram marketing campaign. If you’ve been utilizing many hashtags and other organic Instagram growth techniques, such as free Instagram followers from Path Social and your account hasn’t been growing much (or at all), you could be mistakenly using banned hashtags.

What are banned hashtags?

Banned hashtags are hashtags that Instagram users have reported because the posts utilizing them go against Instagram’s standards. This implies that every post that utilizes that hashtag will be hidden, which will only hinder your organic reach and growth efforts.

Banned hashtags are continuously changing, depending on community complaints and Instagram’s investigations. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t publish a list of the presently restricted hashtags, but that’s why articles like this one exist!

Why does Instagram block hashtags?

Instagram limits hashtags due to complaints from users. Typically, it occurs because individuals are uploading harmful stuff and utilizing particular hashtags. Meanwhile, you would not expect some of the restricted hashtags, such as #makeupbeauty, to be ones you would expect. Sometimes, however, near alternatives are still good. In this situation, #beautybloggers, with a “s” at the end, is not restricted and works just fine.

Most people wouldn’t publish bad stuff using otherwise harmless hashtags. On the other hand, Instagram is attempting to improve the platform for its actual users by cracking down on phony accounts, since these postings usually originate from bots or spam accounts.

Is there a procedure for dealing with banned hashtags?

Using any of these hashtags may prevent your post from being seen by your followers. Only those who visit your profile, provide a link in your Stories, or accidentally search for the banned hashtag will be able to see it.

Instagram may deactivate your account or apply a “shadowban” if they detect that you use too many banned hashtags. Being cautious is preferable to being too cautious in this situation. Make sure you’re only using active, authorized hashtags that will increase the number of people who see your post and, by extension, your Instagram followers by checking them before you use them.

Tips for Staying Out of Banned Hashtags

We have established that Instagram does not maintain an up-to-the-minute list of banned hashtags, and that this list does change periodically. Finding similar sites and perusing the list of presently banned hashtags are good places to start. Do not include them in your strategy if you are utilizing any of them.

Businesses may utilize a wide variety of hashtag methods. For the sake of consistency in their company and their postings, some individuals choose to compile a big list of relevant hashtags. Then, in order to choose the most relevant hashtags, they will use that collection every time they publish.

Various individuals come up with their own “sets” of hashtags. Afterward, they choose the set that best matches the post’s content and use it. While this may save you some time, keep in mind that the quality of your hashtags may suffer compared to when you manually choose them.

Some individuals even make posts without first thinking of a list of hashtags to use; they just make them up as they go along. Having your hashtags prepared before you click “Post” is essential to avoid wasting time since the Instagram algorithm starts sorting and rating the posts immediately after publishing, making this method the most time-intensive.

You should always double-check your hashtags to avoid using any of Instagram’s banned hashtags, regardless of the technique you choose to add them. You may prevent any hashtags from being added to the banned list by checking your bank or collections of hashtags periodically. You should also examine the hashtags you pick each time if you choose them randomly.

Please be mindful of your activity to avoid being flagged as spammy, since Instagram employs measures such as these to identify and remove fraudulent accounts. Changing up the hashtags you use is one approach. Instagram can tell you’re not a real person if you use the same 10 hashtags in all of your posts. Use separate hashtags for each picture and description that are relevant to their respective content. An algorithm may verify that you are an actual person with a legitimate account if it finds that the hashtags you’ve used correspond to the items in the photo you’ve uploaded.

Just put the hashtag you wish to use into the search bar on the Explore page to discover whether it’s forbidden. The next step is to click on it to see its action. If you see a notice that says recent posts with that hashtag are hidden because Instagram users have complained that the content doesn’t follow their rules, it means the hashtag is banned. You can tell it’s clean and ready to go if a search for the hashtag returns just the number of posts and no additional messages.

A decrease in interaction on your posts without any recent changes to your hashtags might indicate that one of them has been blocked. Make sure you find the right one by searching for your hashtags. The next time you see a decline in engagement, just take it out of your strategy and replace it with another.

Instagram Banning Hashtags

Since Instagram never provides clear information on banned hashtags and they are subject to constant change, navigating them may be a real challenge. Avoiding banned hashtags may be more work, but the engagement and development that may result from utilizing excellent, correct hashtags are well worth it. Is there a banned hashtag that I haven’t seen here? If anything changes, please let us know so that we can update this page.

When posting selfies on Instagram, don’t forget to comment on them with something interesting and relevant. Captions like this may give your material more character and encourage more engagement from viewers.

Sum Up

A thorough familiarity with Instagram’s community rules and terms of service is essential for navigating the platform’s hashtag realm. Shadowbanning and other account limitations are among the severe repercussions that might result from using restricted hashtags. Keep yourself updated on the list of banned hashtags so you can avoid using them in your postings.

You may make your post more visible while still following Instagram’s rules if you use relevant and acceptable hashtags that describe your content well and attract your target audience.