Use this simple new tool to help figure out your Instagram hashtags

July 8, 2016 by John Aldred 10 Comments

These days, you can’t really expect any kind of decent exposure for your work on Instagram if you don’t use hashtags. It’s just become the nature of the beast.

But where do you begin to determine what hashtags to use? Well, Reddit user Nick Smith has come up with a tool to at least get you started, suggesting hashtags based on your subject and location.

There’s not much to it at the moment beyond a few basic styles of photography and locations, but it has the makings of being a pretty good tool. Suggestions for improvements are certainly coming through thick and fast on Reddit and Product Hunt.

You can check out Dehaze for yourself here, and whether you’re shooting a Macro in Mexico, a Landscape in London, or Travel in Tokyo, you’ll have a good selection of hastags handy from which to choose.

It will be interesting to see how this develops as Nick receives more styles and locations. It could end up being a whole lot of data that users don’t want to have to sift through needlessly, so keeping an efficient method of searching through them is going to be vital.

So, a handy tool with a lot of potential? Are you better off just doing the research yourself if you want the best exposure? Or do you think hashtags are a waste of time? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

[via Reddit]

About John Aldred

John Aldred is based in Scotland and photographs animals in the studio and people in the wild.

You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.

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Eugene Sapozhnikov

I wonder if they try to use the most popular tags for each category, form the results it does not seem to be so.
- Nick Smith
  
  Nope. I spent about 2 weeks analysing the categories and deciding on the channels with the best engagement and following. In the near future, this will be data-driven
  - Eugene Sapozhnikov
    
    Very cool!
Hector Macias

Geezus. All to get fake Internet points. The more hash tags the more potential for fakie points.
- Nick Smith
  
  I know they’re grim, right? Gotta keep fueling that lovely narcisism.
- Mike
  
  What i’ve discovered so far is that these tags have done a better job than myself randomly picking them out. So far, no russian porn spam bots hitting me like normal. everyone that has liked my stuff has legit photos on their page. If you don’t like fake internet points…don’t use the internet. pretty simple.
JP Danko

Totally going to try this out – this should be adapted for stock keywording!
- Nick Smith
  
  Thanks JP
Nick Smith

Thanks for posting! Any feedback/comments please hit me up: nick@dehaze.co
Mike

Really great Nick! I normally don’t go hash tag crazy, so i tried this out tonight to see what would happen. I’ll wait for the morning to see the final results. I did run into an issue that I apparently had too many hashtags or characters for instagram. 1. My work flow was to post the picture. 2. Add my normal tags. 3. Flip over to Safari and copy the ones from your site. 4. Add them to the post. 5. XXXX Error Message. So i deleted a few off the end until it would let me post. I also tried copy and pasting from two categories — black and white, Landscape. Ran into the same issue. It would be cool to be able to see this data driven and also to see the ability to select the more than one category and have your tool auto detect the too many hashtag/character limits. Great work man. Looking forward to see what you come up with next on this! Happy to help test this out. hit me up via instagram if you testers. @thelamber1