One of the hardest things people face is choosing the right hashtags for their businesses. We’ve taken +15k posts from Instagram and run it through our R&D team, which analysed it extensively.
Summary
Challenge: Businesses struggle to choose effective hashtags for maximizing engagement on Instagram.
Solution: This report analyzes factors influencing engagement and hashtag effectiveness.
Key Findings:
- Popularity doesn’t equal effectiveness: Using highly popular hashtags can lead to your post being lost in a sea of content.
- Focus on specific hashtags: Hashtags that target your niche or content type are more likely to attract a relevant and engaged audience.
- Likes/Followers ratio as a metric: This metric allows for fair comparison of engagement across accounts with different follower counts.
- Machine learning potential: A simple bag-of-words model can identify impactful hashtags based on historical data.
Limitations:
- Limited data set: A wider data pool could provide more robust findings.
Actionable Insights:
- Businesses should prioritize targeted hashtags over popular ones.
- Utilize the Likes/Followers ratio when evaluating engagement.
- Consider exploring machine learning tools for hashtag selection.
Conclusion: Implementing these findings can lead to a more effective hashtag strategy, boosting your Instagram reach and engagement.
The Dataset
Sorting through tens of thousands of posts, we have selected a subset of users that have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. This subset of users felt like a good middle ground of up-and-coming accounts and well established content creators. The data was scraped recently, and included followers, following, posts, likes, and respective post data for each.
Sample single data entry
{
"account": "marklions",
"fbid": "17841401315149391",
"id": "601067838",
"followers": 118378,
"posts_count": 346,
"is_business_account": false,
"is_professional_account": true,
"is_verified": true,
"avg_engagement": 0.0078,
"external_url": [
"https://m.facebook.com/Gian-Marco-Leoni-Photos-1422370054748662/"
],
"biography": "Sardinia 🌌 ☀️ Italy 🇮🇹\nSharing in multipost with other authors is prohibited\n⬇⬇Facebook⬇⬇",
"business_category_name": null,
"category_name": "Photographer",
"post_hashtags": [
"sardegna",
"discoverglobe",
"sardinia",
"focus",
"italy",
"nature",
"italia",
"night",
"wonderful_places",
"astrophotography",
"discoverearth",
"awesome_earthpix",
"earthofficial",
"tourtheplanet",
"bestplacestogo",
"earthfocus",
"ourplanetdaily",
"awesomeearth",
"jpl",
"beautifuldestinations",
"stayandwander",
"earthpix",
"esa",
"nasa",
"unionesarda",
"moon",
"nofilter",
"milkyway",
"awesome",
"nightphotography",
"iglesias",
"ig_italia",
"arbus",
"TLPicks",
"piscinas",
"baunei",
"natgeo",
"travel",
"vacation",
"nightphoto",
"sonyalpha",
"sardegna_super_pics",
"awesomephotography",
"discover_earthpix",
"welcometo_moon",
"welcome",
"mineralmoon",
"superluna",
"lunionesarda",
"domusnovas",
"natgeoyourshot",
"flamingo",
"cerdeña",
"naturegeography",
"awesome_photographers",
"italiainunoscatto",
"fenicotteri",
"giba",
"masainas",
"sangiovannisuergiu",
"destination_italy",
"bestvacations",
"world_great",
"spiaggedasogno",
"wildanimals",
"travel_drops",
"animallovers",
"gentiarrubia",
"nikonphotography",
"guspini",
"arbatax",
"teulada",
"fluminimaggiore",
"tempiodiantas",
"calasetta",
"santantioco",
"masua",
"volgoitalia",
"sardegna_reporter",
"ladolcevitaly",
"sardream",
"milkyway_nightscapes",
"isarenasbiancas",
"arcipelagodellamaddalena",
"drone",
"lamaddalena",
"ig_vision",
"tropical",
"europe",
"lanuovasardegna",
"sardegnaofficial",
"laconi",
"vivosardegna"
],
"following": 193,
"posts": [
{
"caption": "Sardinia Night 📸 🌌 🌒 🇮🇹\n\n#sardegna #discoverglobe #sardinia #focus #italy #nature #italia #night #wonderful_places #astrophotography #discoverearth #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #tourtheplanet #bestplacestogo #earthfocus #ourplanetdaily #awesomeearth #jpl #beautifuldestinations #stayandwander #earthpix #esa #nasa #unionesarda #moon #nofilter",
"comments": 19,
"datetime": "2024-01-09T18:48:22.000Z",
"id": "3276636567260653258",
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"likes": 304,
"location": {
"has_public_page": true,
"id": "234825861",
"name": "Sardinia",
"slug": "sardinia"
},
"post_hashtags": [
"sardegna",
"discoverglobe",
"sardinia",
"focus",
"italy",
"nature",
"italia",
"night",
"wonderful_places",
"astrophotography",
"discoverearth",
"awesome_earthpix",
"earthofficial",
"tourtheplanet",
"bestplacestogo",
"earthfocus",
"ourplanetdaily",
"awesomeearth",
"jpl",
"beautifuldestinations",
"stayandwander",
"earthpix",
"esa",
"nasa",
"unionesarda",
"moon",
"nofilter"
]
},
{
"caption": "3 Pics Sardinia Milky way 🌌\n\n#sardegna #milkyway #awesome #nightphotography #iglesias #sardinia #ig_italia #italy #nature #italia #arbus #wonderful_places #TLPicks #discoverearth #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #piscinas #bestplacestogo #earthfocus #ourplanetdaily #awesomeearth #baunei #beautifuldestinations #stayandwander #earthpix #natgeo #travel #vacation #nightphoto",
"comments": 58,
"datetime": "2023-10-05T19:46:40.000Z",
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"name": "Sardinia",
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"milkyway",
"awesome",
"nightphotography",
"iglesias",
"sardinia",
"ig_italia",
"italy",
"nature",
"italia",
"arbus",
"wonderful_places",
"TLPicks",
"discoverearth",
"awesome_earthpix",
"earthofficial",
"piscinas",
"bestplacestogo",
"earthfocus",
"ourplanetdaily",
"awesomeearth",
"baunei",
"beautifuldestinations",
"stayandwander",
"earthpix",
"natgeo",
"travel",
"vacation",
"nightphoto"
]
},
{
"caption": "Welcome To The Moon 📷 🌓\n\nSingle exposure 21/09/2023\n\n#moon #sardegna #sardinia #nightphotography #italy #nature #italia #natgeo #unionesarda #astrophotography\n#sonyalpha #travel #discoverearth #sardegna_super_pics\n#nightphoto #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #awesomephotography\n#discoverglobe #nasa #esa #discover_earthpix\n#welcometo_moon #welcome",
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"datetime": "2023-09-21T22:28:46.000Z",
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"name": "Sardinia",
"slug": "sardinia"
},
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"sardegna",
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"nightphotography",
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"nature",
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"natgeo",
"unionesarda",
"astrophotography",
"sonyalpha",
"travel",
"discoverearth",
"sardegna_super_pics",
"nightphoto",
"awesome_earthpix",
"earthofficial",
"awesomephotography",
"discoverglobe",
"nasa",
"esa",
"discover_earthpix",
"welcometo_moon",
"welcome"
]
},
{
"caption": "SuperLuna dello Storione 📷 🌕 2023\n\nMineral Moon - Singola esposizione\n\n#mineralmoon #superluna #awesome #sardegna #lunionesarda #sardinia #ig_italia #italy #nature #italia #domusnovas #wonderful_places #TLPicks #discoverearth #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #esa #bestplacestogo #earthfocus #awesomeearth #nightphotography #beautifuldestinations #stayandwander #earthpix #natgeoyourshot #travel #vacation #moon #astrophotography",
"comments": 86,
"datetime": "2023-09-12T19:44:02.000Z",
"id": "3190420996882667314",
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"name": "Sardinia",
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"ig_italia",
"italy",
"nature",
"italia",
"domusnovas",
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"TLPicks",
"discoverearth",
"awesome_earthpix",
"earthofficial",
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"beautifuldestinations",
"stayandwander",
"earthpix",
"natgeoyourshot",
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"vacation",
"moon",
"astrophotography"
]
},
{
"caption": "Genti Arrubia - Fenicotteri Rosa 📷 Sardegna Italy\n\nMasainas, Giba e San Giovanni Suergiu\n\n#flamingo #sardinia #cerdeña #naturegeography #awesome_photographers #italiainunoscatto #sardegna #fenicotteri #giba #masainas #sangiovannisuergiu #ig_italia #unionesarda #destination_italy #beautifuldestinations #bestvacations #earthpix #wonderful_places #world_great #spiaggedasogno #nature #wildanimals #unionesarda #italy #italia #travel_drops #natgeoyourshot #travel #animallovers #gentiarrubia",
"comments": 47,
"datetime": "2023-08-23T07:37:59.000Z",
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"destination_italy",
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"earthpix",
"wonderful_places",
"world_great",
"spiaggedasogno",
"nature",
"wildanimals",
"unionesarda",
"italy",
"italia",
"travel_drops",
"natgeoyourshot",
"travel",
"animallovers",
"gentiarrubia"
]
},
{
"caption": "Sardegna Italia 📸\n\n1 Montevecchio Guspini\n2 Campu Spina Domusnovas \n3 Moon\n\n#unionesarda #domusnovas #awesome #sardegna #milkyway #sardinia #ig_italia #italy #nature #italia #nikonphotography #wonderful_places #TLPicks #discoverearth #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #moon #bestplacestogo #earthfocus #ourplanetdaily #awesomeearth #nightphotography #beautifuldestinations #stayandwander #earthpix #night #travel #vacation #guspini",
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},
{
"caption": "Sandinia Night 📸 🌌 Italy\n\n1 Tempio di Antas Fluminimaggiore \n2 Dune Is Arenas Biancas Teulada\n3 Rocce Rosse Arbatax \n\n#arbatax #unionesarda #awesome #sardegna #night #sardinia #ig_italia #italy #nature #italia #nightphotography #wonderful_places #TLPicks #discoverearth #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #milkyway #bestplacestogo #earthfocus #ourplanetdaily #awesomeearth #teulada #beautifuldestinations #stayandwander #earthpix #natgeo #fluminimaggiore #travel #vacation #tempiodiantas",
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"nightphotography",
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"stayandwander",
"earthpix",
"natgeo",
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"vacation",
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{
"caption": "Sardinia Night 📸🌌 Italy\n\n1 Faro Mangiabarche Calasetta\n2 Arco dei Baci Sant'Antioco\n3 Punta San Michele Domusnovas\n\n#sardegna #nightphotography #awesome #calasetta #santantioco #domusnovas #sardinia #ig_italia #italy #nature #italia #wonderful_places #TLPicks #discoverearth #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #milkyway #bestplacestogo #earthfocus #ourplanetdaily #awesomeearth #beautifuldestinations #stayandwander #earthpix #natgeo #travel #vacation #unionesarda",
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"beautifuldestinations",
"stayandwander",
"earthpix",
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{
"caption": "4 Pics ➡️ Milky Way 🌌 Sardinia Italy 🇮🇹\n\n1 Dune di Piscinas Arbus\n2 Pan di Zucchero Masua\n3 Grotte di San Giovanni Domusnovas \n4 Tempio di Antas Fluminimaggiore\n\n#sardinia #cerdeña #naturegeography #awesome_photographers #italiainunoscatto #natgeo #milkyway #arbus #masua #volgoitalia #sardegna_reporter #ig_italia #fluminimaggiore #destination_italy #beautifuldestinations #bestvacations #earthpix #wonderful_places #nightphotography #ladolcevitaly #unionesarda #italy #italia #travel #sardream #awesome_photographers",
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{
"caption": "Is Arenas Biancas 🌌 Sardinia Italy 🇮🇹\n\nSingle exposure D750 14mm f2.8 ISO 3200 25\"\n\n#nightphotography #teulada #awesome #sardegna #milkyway #sardinia #ig_italia #italy #nature #italia #milkyway_nightscapes #wonderful_places #TLPicks #discoverearth #awesome_earthpix #earthofficial #isarenasbiancas #bestplacestogo #earthfocus #ourplanetdaily #awesomeearth #unionesarda #beautifuldestinations #stayandwander #earthpix #natgeo #travel #vacation #night",
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},Normalising the data
In order to do fair comparisons, we must take into account the size of the account vs the performance of their posts. An account with 100k followers will get more likes than an account with 10k followers, but the question is will they get relatively more or less.
To do this, we have established a new metric in our dataset, the likes/followers ratio. This ratio allows us to have a fair metric that scales no matter the account size.
Removing outliers
A like/follower ratio of greater than 1 suggests that a post has gone “viral”, exceeding likes past the number of followers. Because this is an area of research all on its own, we have removed posts that exceed a like/follower ratio of 1 in our study.
We’ve also removed posts with very low engagement (<0.01 like/follower ratio), which are often indicative of accounts that have farmed followers that do not later engage with the account content.
Posts without any likes or no caption have also been removed from the dataset.
How often do followers engage with the accounts?
To determine if Likes/Followers is even a valid metric in the first place, we’ve plotted a distribution of the ratio of Likes/Followers vs how often we see them. We’ve used 100 bins and cut off data above 0.2 for better visualisation.
As the graph shows us above, The distribution looks to follow a classic bell-curve pattern (the latter half), with the Likes/Followers engagement dropping off in frequency as it improves. This means that the majority of accounts will see an engagement rate of 0.01 to around 0.025; for every 100 followers, 1-2.5 likes are expected. We can run a further calculation of the data to obtain the mean, min, and max values of the ratio.
Mean Likes/Followers Ratio 0.0453 Min Likes/Followers Ratio 0.0100 Max Likes/Followers Ratio 0.9692
Here we see that on average (using the mean) accounts tend to get around 4.5 likes for every 100 followers they have. Our min and max values are interesting to compute but not that relevant here, since they (as expected) cutoff near 0 and 1 due to our data preprocessing step.
Impact of amount of followers on engagement rates
To study if the amount of followers impacted engagement, we’ve used a scatter graph to plot the Like/Follower ratio against the count of followers. Due to the exponential nature of follower growth, we’ve used a logarithmic scale on that axis. Additionally, we’ve included a poly-fit trend line to better visualise the trend.
At first glance, it may be tempting to see that there’s an increase in engagement as the accounts followers grow, but in reality we must understand that the scale is logarithmic and the trend is way closer to being flat than to anything else. We can calculate the correlation coefficient to see how strong the correlation actually is:
Correlation between followers and Likes/Followers ratio 0.124
As we can see from the correlation coefficient, the score is quite low, suggesting a very weak correlation between the amount of followers a person has and their engagement rate.
Its worth noting that when we plotted the data and included the outliers that we stripped during our data-preprocessing stage, we saw an even lower correlation, approaching 0.03.
Impact of likes on engagement rates
Conversely, we’ve plotted the likes vs the Likes/Followers ratio, and here we see a better correlation.
Firstly, it’s worth comparing the scales of data between the likes here and the followers in the previous chart – we see a 2x larger distribution in likes vs in follower counts.
Interestingly, we see a wider range of engagement distribution the more likes a given post has, and even though the trend line drawn is linear, we can see that the relationship is in fact logarithmic.
The computed correlation coefficient here is much higher:
Correlation between likes and Likes/Followers ratio 0.654
So what does this actually mean? Well, if we doubled the amount of likes and doubled the amount of followers in our Like/Follower ratio, the ratio would stay the same, and the trend line would be flat. In order for the trend line to exhibit a positive slope, the rate of likes needs to increase at a faster pace than the rate of followers. This suggests that users will typically see better engagement (more likes-per-follower) the more followers a person has.
Plotting likes vs followers
Lastly, as a way to check and confirm the “obvious”, we’ve plotted likes vs followers. Here we expect to see a clean and positive linear correlation.
As expected, there’s a clear correlation of getting more likes the more followers you have. We even see that with the computed correlation coefficient:
Correlation between followers and likes 0.667
More interestingly though, is the rate and relationship between the two. When reading the graph, it is important to take note of the scales, there’s only a log scale factor of 2x on the followers, but a 4x factor on likes. Scaling the chart gives us a better visual representation of the slope of the trend line.
With the scaled graph, its much easier to see that for each logarithmic step of followers, a corresponding and nearly equal step of likes can be observed.
Hashtag usage frequency
Analysing now the post content itself, we take a look at the frequency of hashtag usage as a percent-total of our subset of post data. In our research, across 10k posts we saw 4857 unique hashtags.
The red line represents the average, hashtags to the right of this are used more frequently than average, and hashtags to the left are used less frequently than average.
Hashtags related to travel and visual content appear to be most frequent. These include #travel, #photography, #photooftheday, #naturephotography, and #travelgram.
General purpose hashtags like #instagram, #instagood, and #beautiful are also popular.
Positive words like #happy and #summer are also relatively common.
We can see here that #travel takes the top, nearly doubling the next best contender (#love) in terms of usage frequency. This clearly reflects the “catch flights, not feelings” statement.
However, just because a hashtag is used often, doesn’t mean that it’s effective. If anything, using popular hashtags means that your post is likely to get drowned in all the noise.
Hashtag power on engagement
In order to better understand the impact of each hashtag, we’ve plotted the hashtag against the average like/follower ratio that the account using the hashtag has. This gives us an indication of the engagement-power of a given hashtag.
The red line represents the average likes/followers ratio that any given account can expect. We can see that the top hashtags here all perform better than the average engagement rate on Instagram.
Interestingly, very few of the popular hashtags we’ve seen on the previous graph are actually present on this graph. This tells us that the popularity of a hashtag is not related to its effectiveness.
The most effective hashtags in terms of average likes to followers ratio tend to be more specific. For instance, #hotsprings and #easterdecor appear to be more effective than #foodpics or #goodmorning.
Hashtags related to travel (#californiadreaming, #singapore) and events (#eventos, #event) appear throughout the list, suggesting they may be somewhat effective at driving engagement.
Hashtag frequency vs power
We can also plot the frequency of a given hashtag against the likes/followers ratio, which give us an indication if popular hashtags increase or decrease likes on a post.
The graph shows the frequency of hashtags plotted against the average Likes/Followers ratio. The x-axis represents the frequency of hashtag use, while the y-axis represents the average Likes/Followers ratio. Each data point represents a particular hashtag. The red line represents the average Likes/Followers ratio across all hashtags analyzed in the dataset, which as we saw before, is 0.045.
Here are some key observations from the graph:
- Hashtags with lower usage tend to have a higher Likes/Followers ratio. This suggests that more specific hashtags, used less frequently, are associated with higher engagement.
- Hashtags with higher usage tend to have a lower Likes/Followers ratio. This aligns with the finding that popular hashtags may lead to less engagement because there is more competition for attention within those hashtags.
- There are some exceptions to the trend. There are a few data points with high frequency (popular hashtags) that also have a high Likes/Followers ratio. This suggests that some popular hashtags can still be effective for driving engagement.
Overall, the graph provides evidence to support the idea that focusing on specific hashtags over popular hashtags can be a more effective strategy for maximizing engagement on Instagram.
Number of hashtags vs post engagement
Another interesting metric is how many hashtags to include in your post, and how it affects the likes/followers ratio.
The average amount of hashtags per post is around 14, and most people seem to write between 0 and 30 hashtags, with only a few posts exceeding it.
Correlation between number of hashtags and Likes/Followers ratio 0.0191
Each data point represents one post. The x-axis shows the number of hashtags used in a post, and the y-axis shows the ratio of likes to followers for that post. The red line shows the average ratio of likes to followers across all posts.
A coefficient close to 0, like 0.019 in this case, means there is weak or no linear correlation between the two variables.
In other words, based on this data, there is no statistically significant relationship between the number of hashtags used in a post and the average ratio of likes to followers for that post. This means that using more or fewer hashtags is unlikely to have a significant impact on the ratio of likes to followers for a post.
Number of hashtags vs likes/followers vs followers
An interesting factor here is to see if the number of hashtags changes as the number of followers a user grows, and if that has any impact on the like/follow ratio. To do this, we need to add a 3rd dimension to the chart above, and we get something like the graph below.
What we can see here is that the more followers an account has (the axis is logarithmic), the less hashtags that account tends to use. This correlation looks to be significantly stronger than the number of hashtags vs the likes/followers ratio, but it’s important not to confuse causation and correlation. Just because accounts with higher followings tend to use less hashtags doesn’t mean that the solution is less hashtags, it could just mean that as a given account grows to larger sizes, hashtags become less and less relevant.
Training a simple bag-of-words model for machine-learning
Another interesting way to determine the importance of each hashtag is to train a bag-of-words model on the data, and then inspect the output weights of each hashtag. The greater-from-average the distance of a weight is, the more impactful it is on the model.
The training
Training was done on a single linear layer with a Mean Square Loss criterion and an Adam optimiser starting with a learning rate of 0.005 over 25 epochs.
We can see that overfitting has started to settle in after around the 15th epoch, so the hyper parameters could be revisited to get a better model result.
The train loss appears to be consistently lower than the validation loss. This is a common occurrence, because the training data is used to fit the model, while the validation data is used to assess how well the model generalizes to unseen data.
The y-axis starts at 0.00 and ends at 0.06, which suggests that the losses are relatively low.
Overall, the graph suggests that the machine learning model is performing well and learning effectively.
After training, the test loss was at 0.0051, which shows that the model has learned quite well.
The resulting weights
The magnitude of the weight indicates the strength of the association between the word and the target variable. Larger positive weights indicate stronger positive association, while larger negative weights indicate stronger negative association. The sign of the weight (positive or negative) indicates the direction of the association. A positive weight suggests that the presence of the word is associated with a higher likelihood of having a higher value for the target variable. Conversely, a negative weight suggests that the presence of the word is associated with a lower value for the target variable.
Words with larger weights are considered more important or informative for the task at hand. These words contribute more to the decision-making process of the model. However, it’s essential to note that words with smaller weights can still be informative, especially when they occur in specific contexts or combinations with other words.
Here are some other observations about the graph:
- Words related to travel and location, such as “california”, “palmtree”, “singapore”, and “dolomites” tend to have a higher weight. Its likely that using these hashtags instead of just “travel” will be more impactful
- Words related to food, such as “foodgasm” and “foodpics” also have a high weight
- Positive words, such as “goodmorning”, “happyness”, and “relax” also have a high weight, suggesting that an overall positive sentiment of the post is impactful
While interpreting the weights can provide insights into the model’s behaviour and the importance of different words, it’s essential to remember that the interpretation might not always be straightforward. Bag-of-words models treat words independently and don’t consider the syntactic or semantic relationships between them. Additionally, certain words might have different meanings or connotations depending on the context, which might not be fully captured by the model. Additionally, the split of training data means that only a random subset of analysed hashtags (around 80%) made it into training and as such, have associated weights.
Bonus: rating LLM hashtag generation performance
To go a step further, we wanted to evaluate the performance in Hashtag generation from Googles LLM model, Gemini. Unlike our model which works by essentially rating a combination of hashtags, LLMs work by looking at the frequency and probability of a hashtag to exist. In this sense, LLMs have no clue if the hashtags are effective or not, just if they are popular and a common occurrence.
Example 1
In order to test the quality of hashtags generated by the LLM, we have given it the following image of a mountain scape (all photos are taken by one of our talented photographers on the team).
The prompt provided was: Write 14 good Instagram hashtags for good engagement for this picture:.
The resulting response was:
- #mountains
- #sunset
- #nature
- #landscape
- #goldenhour
- #skyporn
- #cloudscapes
- #gratitude
- #adventure
- #travelgram
- #optoutside
- #earthporn
- #mountainlovers
- #sunsetlovers
We asked it to generate 14 hashtags because as our data has shown, thats the average amount of hashtags a given post has. We then passed the 14 generated hashtags to our model to evaluate.
Our model has responded with a predicted likes/follower ratio of 0.1231 for the combination of hashtags, suggesting that this combination would outperform the average by nearly 3 times.
Example 2
With the same prompt and the image above, the LLM generated the following hashtags:
- #moonphotography
- #moonlovers
- #moonlit
- #nightphotography
- #treephotography
- #naturephotography
- #earthskyscape
- #moodygrams
- #nightaesthetic
- #silhouetted
- #branches
- #moonmagic
- #celestial
- #lunaphotography
Our model predicted a likes/followers ratio of 0.0833 for this collection of captions. While worse than the previous result, it’s still nearly 2x more performant than the average.
Example 3
With the same prompt as before, the generated hashtags were:
- #winterwonderland
- #snowforest
- #aerialphotography
- #dronephotography
- #naturephotography
- #frozenlandscape
- #forestphotography
- #winterscene
- #trees
- #snow
- #naturelover
- #landscapephotography
- #outdoors
- #getoutside
Our model has predicted a like/followers engagement rate of 0.0763, which is still above average.
Limitations of the study
Limited subset of posts
As with any research, our limited data set (compared to the millions available at the source) means that we’re only seeing a scoped view of the data.
Likes don’t necessarily correspond to the followers
Our data contains the count of likes for each post, and the count of followers for each account. We’ve made the metric likes/followers to normalise data, but there is no way for us to know if the likers are the same people that follow the account.
Bag of words vocabulary limited to 5k hashtags it has seen
The bag of words vocabulary was generated from all the collected hashtags, so for any new hashtags, it’ll just output 0 and ignore them.
No time metrics included
There’s many factors that determine how many likes a post gets, and a big one is the time and date of the post. This study does not take this into account.
Conclusion
This study has investigated factors influencing engagement on Instagram and the effectiveness of hashtags for businesses. Our analysis revealed that the most popular hashtags are not necessarily the most impactful for driving engagement. Instead, accounts should focus on using targeted hashtags that are specific to their niche or content.
The Likes/Followers ratio emerged as a valuable metric for comparing engagement across accounts with varying follower sizes. We also explored the potential of machine learning for identifying impactful hashtags based on historical data.
While this study offers valuable insights, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of the data set used. Further research with a larger and more diverse data set could provide even more robust findings. Additionally, exploring engagement based on content type or industry could be a valuable avenue for future studies.
By implementing the findings from this report, businesses can make informed decisions about their hashtag strategy, maximizing their reach and engagement on Instagram. Remember, choosing specific hashtags over popular ones can lead to a more engaged audience and a stronger online presence.