How To Create Branded Instagram Hashtags & Build Community

Extending Your Brand Reach

Hi everyone! I’m so excited to talk to you today. I run the Instagram account and website ‘Best Friends For Frosting’. We’re a lifestyle brand that covers interior design, DIY, motivational speaking, and so much more.

I’m all about joyful living, positivity, happiness, the finer things in life, and living in the moment.

That’s who I am at my essence, and that’s what I’m bringing to the table on the ‘Best Friends For Frosting’ feed. Over 5 years we’ve grown our blog readership and our Instagram account to over 80,000 followers. We’re not just a place to go for curated content but we’ve also been able to create a passionate community around our brand

One of the ways we’ve been able to do this is by creating and promoting our own hashtags. The hashtag we like to use is #SoBestFriendsForFrosting. Creating your own hashtag is a great strategy to not only strengthen your own brand but to expand your reach out into the wider community of your niche.

Our brand is very bright and cheery and it’s appealed to a lot of creative bloggers in the industry. We wanted to give them a way to interact with our brand with their own content whether they’re wedding planners, event photographers, or bakeries.

A lot of the content we post is regrams from members of our community anyway, so it felt like a natural next step to further band us all together.

It’s also works as a mechanism to grow our account and community. When you promote your own hashtag and it begins to catch on with your community the Instagram algorithm will actually begin to suggest it in the autofill to other users when they’re tagging posts.

This happens not just for users who are following your account but also for new users who don’t know about you yet. It’s been awesome for our account growth and it’s a wonderful way to bring new people into our community.

We chose the hashtag #SoBestFriendsForFrosting because we wanted it to clearly tie back to the brand and not seem generic. Initially we were thinking of #SoBFFF but that could mean anything! Spelling the entire name out works to start building that association in people’s minds.

I think every time you use your brand name is an opportunity to brand yourself and gain a new follower.

Creating your community around a hashtag works really well. People will typically use several branded hashtags from communities they respect. It instantly adds to your street cred and elevates your brand position.

 

Action Steps

1. Create a hashtag that reflects your brand and community.
2. Use your own branded hashtag in your posts and encourage your audience to use it as well.
3. Comment and like on posts that use your branded hashtag.
4. Give shout outs to other branded hashtags in your niche to raise your credibility.

 

Result You Will Achieve

A stronger community associating with your own hashtags and promoting them.

This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.