Stop focusing on hashtag strategy. There are bigger fish to fry.

Hashtags are dead.

It took me years until I stopped being too stubborn to give up on Heroes of Newerth, after virtually everybody over there told me that HON is a dead game.

Yeah, but it was being played every day by a lot of people. Yes, but it was no longer mainstream, no longer the center of attention, like for example League of Legends.

It was a barren wasteland, ruins, filled by the worst scum of people on earth. There’s no way you can blame yourself for losing on it.

On the other hand, the games that were still popular and mainstream, at least in the same genre, had real people playing them, that if you didn’t suck, you will get the place or matchmaking rate (MMR) that you deserve. That suits you. That is reflective of your competence level. That is corresponding to how good you really are in the game.

HON is dead. And so are hashtags on Instagram. They are either saturated, and only possible to be dominated by people who get hundreds of thousands of reach on average for every trash post they make, or have no significant traffic.

Yes hashtags with a smaller number of posts have low competition, but also no one goes there. Like at all. And hence the small number of posts on it. Duh?

Who are the type of people who use hashtags to find content on Instagram?

Tell me, do you ever go to a hashtag to consume content? Like ever?

It’s obsolete.

If your post gets shown to someone, even an alien from outer space, and that individual did not interact with it, you get deranked by the algorithm.

If you get a thousand reach and they all come from hashtags, you get deranked a thousand times. Let that sink in.

You failed a test you didn’t sign up for a thousand times. Proof that your post sucks is: mindless trolls have scrolled past it too fast on hashtags.

All reach is good reach, huh?

Please tell me you now understand that this statement is false.

On the other hand, explore shows your stuff to people who are really interested in similar type of content.

And home reach is mainly your followers, who tend to love what you do, and thus will be more likely to engage with your content.

This is what will trigger the algorithm in your favor.