Monetize your blog: 11 Easy ways to turn your passion into profit

These days, the opportunities for making money online are seemingly endless. One of the most tried-and-true methods for generating an online income, however, is that of monetizing your blog. Whether you’re looking to earn a healthy side income or make a living from blogging, there are plenty of opportunities worth exploring.

So, just how much money can you make as a blogger—and how do you make money blogging, anyway? This comprehensive blog will explain:

Best ways to monetize your blog

Let’s explore the best ways for you to turn your passion for blogging into a highly profitable venture, ranging from advertising and affiliate marketing to monetizing through new channels.

Affiliate marketing

You can turn your passion for blogging into a profitable venture with affiliate marketing. By partnering with relevant brands and incorporating their affiliate links within your content, you can earn a commission for every successful referral or sale made through your blog. 

As you can probably imagine, the profits for affiliate marketing can add up very quickly—especially if you have a large reader base.

How can you become a successful affiliate marketer:

1 - Synergy with product or service

The key lies in selecting products or services that align with your blog's niche and resonate with your audience, ensuring that the recommendations you make are genuine and valuable. 

For example, if you are a travel blogger you can sign up to be an affiliate marketer for booking.com. 

2 - Use keyword research

Be strategic in what you write about. Perform keyword research on topics that have a high monthly search volume and lower keyword difficulty.

For example, as an affiliate marketer for booking.com, you could perform keyword research on ahrefs for “book hotel” limiting the keyword difficulty to anything between 0 - 50.

The results will yield several strong topics like:

• How to book a hotel
• Best way to book a hotel
• How to book hotel

3 - Write a blog about the product service

Write a blog about the product or service and include your affiliate link. Now each time a reader makes a purchase through your affiliate link, you receive a certain percentage of the sale. 

For example, based on the keyword research from “book hotel”, you could write a blog about the best ways to book a hotel, listing booking.com as one of the top options. 

Advertise on your blog with Google Adsense

Another way to monetize your blog is to incorporate advertisements into your posts; this can be done easily through Google AdSense, which is a program that will automatically insert ad spaces into your blog posts. From there, you will earn money each time your readers view and/or click those ads.

Advertisements can be a significant source of income for many bloggers—especially for those whose blogs receive heavy visitor traffic on a daily basis. After all, the more people you have visiting your blog, the more likely your ads are to be viewed and clicked on.

If you decide to go this route for monetizing your blog, you’ll still need to focus on creating quality and unique content on a regular basis. After all, you’ll need to maintain and grow your reader base in order for these ads to remain a consistent source of income. 

For example: 

Here’s an example of an ad from Target that was placed on the EatingWell blog using Google AdSense.

Sell ad space directly

When you allow ads to be placed on your blog using AdSense you lose some control over the type of ads. 

However you could always sell ad space directly, this option gives you more control over the ads. Plus you can negotiate customized deals tailored to your target audience. You set your own pricing, terms, and ad formats, allowing for flexibility and creativity in showcasing relevant products or services. 

How to sell ad space directly

First thing to do is create a dedicated landing page on your website that lists your available ad spaces, including banner ads, sponsored posts, or product placements. Or you can provide a link to a media kit which includes that information.

It can also help you sell more ad space if you include statistics highlighting your blog's sessions, engagement, and audience demographics to entice potential advertisers. 

Then just provide potential advertisers an easy way to contact you. 

For example:

Here's a perfect example from Country Rebel. They include some information about them, but the key is they highlight their very impressive social followers and email list size. There’s also a link to their media kit which provides even more information plus an easy way to contact them about advertising opportunities.

Become an influencer

When you consistently produce high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your audience, you build a loyal following and ultimately begin establishing yourself as an authority in their field.

You can expand your reach and reputation as an influencer by guest posting on reputable websites, and attending industry events can help expand your reach and credibility. 

Once you’re seen as an influential authority, this will lead to additional revenue streams such as partnerships and other sponsorship opportunities. 

For example:

Travel blogger, Matt Kepnes, better known as Nomadic Matt, transformed his passion for travel into a successful blog and brand. 

Through his blog, he shares budget travel tips, destination guides, and inspiring stories that have resonated with a global audience. 

He has written books, spoken at travel conferences, and become a trusted resource for travelers seeking advice and inspiration.

Sell an ebook

There is a huge market for ebooks these days—and you actually don’t need extensive experience to create a profitable ebook. In fact, blog posts often make for excellent content that can be easily repurposed into an ebook.

Consider, for example, bundling several of your most successful blog posts and making them into an eBook that you can sell. There are plenty of great and easy-to-use tools that allow you to put an eBook together without previous experience. 

From there, you can simply make your ebook available for purchase on your website or landing page and promote it through other avenues as well. You might even consider submitting your ebook to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing for added exposure and earning potential.

Offer online courses

Likewise, you can use some of your existing blog content to craft an online course that will interest your readers and teach them a new skill. The nice thing about online courses is that they don’t require much (if any) more work than an ebook to create—yet you can typically sell them for a much higher price point.

The main thing to remember with an online course is that you will probably need to develop and create some supplemental content to go along with your existing blog content. This may include anything from slideshow presentations and videos to infographics, templates, and other supporting material that will appeal to a wide range of learners.

There are tools, such as Teachable and Thinkific, that make turning your blog content into an online course super easy.

Once your course is live, you can promote it through your own website, on social media, and elsewhere to further monetize your blog content.

For example:

At AWeber, we created an online course - 24/7 Email Marketing Masterclass - that we sell to our audience to help them get better email marketing results. Part of this course was created using the expert information found in our blog posts.

Offer a paid subscription for your blog

Today’s readers love exclusive content; many of them will even pay out of their own pockets if it means they’ll have access to content that your everyday blog readers do not.

If you have a fervent enough reader base, then, you might consider offering a paid subscription service for those who want access to an even larger and more exclusive library of content. 

By implementing a paid subscription model, you can offer premium content, extra perks, and a personalized experience to subscribers. You could even offer exclusive video content, podcasts, and other downloads in exchange for their paid membership.

The nice thing about these paid subscriptions is that they can be an ongoing source of revenue for as long as you have subscribers. You can charge by the month or even offer a small discount to those who will pay up-front for a year of special content.

Start freelancing

You might want to explore some freelance opportunities after all, blogging is an in-demand skill—and many businesses are willing to pay good money to freelance writers who can deliver quality, unique, and engaging content in a timely manner.

If you’re looking to earn some additional income as a blogger, then, be sure to explore freelancing as an option. You can even post on your blog or website that you are looking for new opportunities and are willing to take on new blogging projects; from there, people can reach out to you and discuss specific terms/payment. 

And of course, you have the freedom to take on as many (or as few) freelance gigs as you want. You can also set your own pricing (which, by the way, most freelance bloggers charge per word).

Many freelance bloggers will require an up-front deposit (sometimes 50% or more) before content is delivered, with the remainder to be paid after the post is published. 

Create a paid newsletter

By offering a paid subscription you can provide your most dedicated readers with valuable insights, in-depth articles, behind-the-scenes access, and exclusive updates. 

A paid newsletter can cover a range of topics, including industry trends, insider tips, expert advice, or premium educational resources. 

You can promote your paid newsletter through their blog, social media channels, and existing email. Make sure you highlight the unique value subscribers will receive.

Try new channels you can monetize - YouTube, Podcast

You’ve already created the content, so just repurpose it on a new channel such as YouTube or with a podcast.

In today’s world, more people would rather listen to content than read it, so use that to your advantage. 

At AWeber we started repurposing our newsletter content into YouTube videos and including it in that week’s newsletter. We’ve found that nearly 50% of total clicks are from the video. 

Book speaking engagements

As you build a reputation within your industry and become widely known as a thought leader through your blog, you might also be able to earn income through public appearances and speaking gigs. No matter what field your blog is in, there’s a good chance that there are annual conferences and other events that need speakers to attend.

If you can get a public speaking gig through one of these conferences (or through another opportunity), you might be surprised at how much money you can make just by speaking for 30-60 minutes on a topic you’re passionate about. 

You don’t need to be a professional public speaker to make money as a presenter at conferences and other events. Don’t wait to be approached and invited to speak, though; there is nothing wrong with reaching out to event organizers directly and letting them know that you’re available to present.

How much money do bloggers make?

The amount of money you can make blogging will vary greatly, depending on a number of factors. 

For example, if you’re hired to be a part- or full-time blogger for a company, then you may be offered a guaranteed salary. In this case, you can generally expect to be paid between $40,000 and $80,000 per year in this type of role. 

If you’re a freelance blogger or run your own blog, then your pay may fluctuate more based on your readership and monetization methods. According to FitSmallBusiness.com, the monthly income for an independent blogger can range from a couple hundred dollars per month (for a beginning blogger) to $15,000 or more per month for an established writer.

Now start earning

As you can see, there are many ways to go about setting your blog up for success and making a profit off of your posts. From paid advertising and affiliate marketing to creating ebooks and online courses, the possibilities for your blog are truly endless. 

At the end of the day, as long as you are taking the time to craft truly engaging and useful content for your reader base, you’ll have the following you need to be successful and profitable. 

From there, it’s just a matter of keeping that momentum going and figuring out which monetization strategies are best suited to your needs.

Looking for more resources to monetize your blog? 

AWeber has you covered with solutions you can use to publish, promote, and sell – all from a single platform.

The post Monetize your blog: 11 Easy ways to turn your passion into profit appeared first on AWeber.

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Are static posts making a comeback?

Static images are as fundamental to social media as the hashtag or the like button. Static image posts revolutionized the way we share images online—from creating a culture of selfies, memes and compulsory food photography to reimagining how brands could relate to audiences.

The rapid rise of short-form video content eclipsed static posts in early 2020, when TikTok and Reels took over popular culture—but now we’re wondering if static posts are making a comeback with Instagram returning to its photo-sharing roots and Meta launching its nostalgia-inducing network, Threads.

We investigated the role of static content as the likely reigning king of social content and how it compares to video, and asked Jackson Alder, Senior Digital Strategist at PFLAG National, to weigh in.

Are audiences and marketers experiencing video post fatigue?

Burnout rates are high for social media teams. According to a Q4 2022 Sprout pulse survey, more than half of social media professionals are either experiencing burnout or have experienced it within the last one to three months. Lack of bandwidth and resources were cited as the biggest contributing factors.

The demands of video production are taxing creators and marketers under pressure to maximize their consistency in hopes of being favored by fickle algorithms. As early as 2019, CNN was already reporting on the burnout rate creators on YouTube experience, often filming, editing and posting multiple long-form videos each week. The New York Times published an exposé centered around creator burnout on TikTok in 2021, explaining the mental strain of constantly producing new short-form videos.

It seems audiences have stopped engaging with video content like they used to, suggesting they too may be experiencing video fatigue. Even last year, 61% of consumers found static images to be the most engaging in-feed content. At Sprout, our metrics reveal static posts are our highest engagement drivers. At the time of publishing, eight of our top 10 highest engagement-generating posts from 2023 feature static images, like carousels and data visualizations. The other two are text-only posts, which makes a compelling case for these tried-and-true formats.

Other brands are seeing this same trend. As Alder puts it, “As marketers, we’re always looking at what’s engaging, and what’s making folks interact on social media. I think the shift [toward static] is because video was the previous trend that made people stop and engage. It’s looking like it’s not as much of an engagement-driver these days, so we’re all just trying to find what is.”

Are static posts as effective as video content?

With our team’s social data and anecdotal evidence from other brands, we see that static posts can be more effective than video content when it comes to generating engagement. But that’s only scratching the surface of what it means to be effective on social.

Most social marketers are upping their investment in static and video content, suggesting that both are vital for overall success. A Q2 2023 Sprout pulse survey found that 59% of marketers are focusing more on images in 2023. By comparison, 53% said they are upping the quantity of 5-15 second videos this year, and 49% are creating more 16-30 second videos.

Always use your strategy and performance metrics to find your ideal content mix, and weigh the pros and cons of each content type. Your brand might be looking to boost discoverability with audiences on video-first platforms like TikTok. Or your data might indicate your audience behaves differently than ours.

By using an analytics tool like Sprout Social’s Post Performance Report, you can filter for your highest performing posts to see how static content compares to video and other post types. These results will help you determine which formats you should prioritize across networks.

4 examples of inspiring static content strategies 

If you want to experiment with incorporating more engagement-worthy static content into your strategy but don’t know where to start, use best practices from these four brands in your content ideation and development. Each brand produces static content that feels unique and modern, and it makes up a core part of their social presence.

1.  PFLAG

PFLAG is the nation’s largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating and advocating for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them. On social, they use static content to fulfill their mission. As Alder describes, “We’re an education and advocacy [organization]…Static images are often the most accessible way to share content, which is a priority for us. Video isn’t very accessible by comparison.”

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A post shared by PFLAG National (@pflag)

Static content like branded graphics and quotes makes up the bulk of PFLAG’s content. “We lean heavily into static images and gifs, with video content being fairly minimal unless we’re at an event. The big reason for this is safety. With all of the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and laws being passed in our country, we must prioritize the safety of our PFLAG families. That means that we can share quotes from those families, but oftentimes can’t share photos,” Alder explains.

Their static posts on their national and regional accounts all feature on-brand colors and graphics that stand out in feeds. The PFLAG team uses Canva as a central hub for streamlining content creation for their team, and the hundreds of volunteer-led chapters across the country.

Parents, kids, teens, and folx who live at the intersection of trans-ness and neurodivergence are invited to our Neurodiversity & Gender Diversity Meeting on July 10 at 7 pm ET. We hope to see you there! Register today ➡️ https://t.co/pBPZpGPga8#Neurodivergent #GenderQueer pic.twitter.com/nf0mIPA9WD

— PFLAG NYC (@pflagnyc) July 5, 2023

This boosts the efficiency of PFLAG’s team, Alder says. “For us, incorporating static imagery means it can be used in a variety of ways and platforms. We’re a small team, and being able to re-use content in email or on other platforms is helpful for us.”

Apply it: Use static formats, like carousels and graphics, to educate your audience. By templatizing these content types in a program like Canva, you will save your team time and make it easy to ensure brand consistency.

2.  Seemore Meats

Seemore Meats is a women-owned meat company that makes sausages with fresh vegetables and humanely-raised meat. On social, their brand excels at leaning into cultural moments and creating their own.

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A post shared by Seemore Meats & Veggies (@eatseemore)

Their fantastical, whimsical and often meme-ified static content is distinctly on-brand, while clearly speaking the language of social. It’s obvious the Seemore team knows who their audience is, and what type of content will make them engage.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Seemore Meats & Veggies (@eatseemore)

Apply it: Static posts don’t have to be boring. If it fits your brand persona, experiment with infusing your product into cultural moments and memes that will resonate with your audience.

3.  IKEA

IKEA, the iconic Swedish home goods and furniture brand, builds rapport with their audience through sharing images that feel warm, cozy and aesthetically pleasing, like their Instagram page demonstrates. It all feels distinctly IKEA, and the swoon-worthy photography elicits giddy praise from their audience.

On other networks like X (formerly known as Twitter), IKEA takes a human-first approach to their static content. They maintain the same elevated photography style, while turning the camera on designers and other team members behind their brand.

Apply it: When everyone else goes lo-fi, try something more high-brow. High-quality photography and staging might be the best approach for showcasing your product. Whatever you do, make sure your content has a look that is undeniably yours.

4.  OREO

The brand behind milk’s favorite cookie is irresistibly playful and creative with their static posts. OREO content often features their products in absurd, comedic scenarios that draw laughs from audiences who are in on the joke.

They used this approach when they rolled out their first post on Threads.

OREO also brings their community center stage by reposting user-generated content, like this Tweet featuring dogs named OREO.

Apply it: Use your brand identity to inform how you approach static content. Surreal scenarios aren’t right for every company. Use your brand style guide as a starting point to hone the right look and feel.

Make room for video and static posts in your calendar

So, is static content back to reclaim its seat on the throne? The answer is, it depends. While static posts can generate high engagement for some brands, going all-in on static might not be right for yours. Ultimately, there’s room for more than one monarch in the social media royal court.

Find the right content mix by listening to your audience and measuring what works. Invest your time and talent strategically to improve your performance, without overtaxing your team’s bandwidth.

Up next: Check out our visual content guide for tips to create social content that is distinct, memorable and impossible to scroll past.

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Why it’s time to break up with your biannual brand survey

Maybe you think you’re in a happy relationship with your current brand survey routine. Twice a year, you go on the brand health reporting equivalent of an excellent date. You get romanced by charts, figures and juicy audience insights. But what about the rest of the year?

Every six months may have been enough in the past, but now, consumer preferences can change instantly. Commissioning a five-figure biannual brand reputation survey—and spending multiple months on data collection and analysis—means the research you conduct will always be stale.

You deserve real-time insights, unfiltered audience opinions and speedy results. It may seem like asking for too much but trust me, you’re worth it. Plus, social insights can give you everything you got from your brand survey and more.

If you’re wondering whether it’s the right time to say goodbye, keep reading. We’re making the case for moving on to bigger and better things.

What is a brand survey?

Brand surveys measure how an audience thinks and feels about a brand. These surveys are designed to gauge overall brand health and perception with specific audiences. For example, if you seek insights on how your brand stacks up against its competitors, you’d probably survey prospects and customers. Alternatively, if you’re trying to understand how your brand resonates as an employer, surveying your colleagues would provide stronger insights.

Survey questions can vary based on your goals. Here are four types of brand survey questions marketers use to learn more about how audiences perceive their brand:

• Cognitive: Questions that assess what audiences associate with your brand. For example, people might associate Apple with “minimalism” or “innovation.”
• Emotional: Questions that measure the emotional connection a respondent has with your brand.
• Descriptive: Questions that prompt respondents to describe your brand in their own words. These questions are typically open-ended.
• Action-based: Questions that ask respondents to rate the quality of their experiences with your brand.

These questions can be used in different combinations to better understand how people view your brand and how that differs from your company’s perception of itself.

Evaluating brand health—why traditional survey methods are not enough

A healthy brand is like having an emergency line of credit for times of crisis. The stronger your brand health is, the more forgiving your audience is likely to be in the event of an issue.

Routine brand health evaluations help you better understand how an unforeseen event might impact your brand’s reputation. This information enables you to determine the perceived threat of a crisis, making it foundational to your response strategy.

If you’re only conducting biannual brand perception surveys, you could be missing meaningful shifts in audience sentiment. If that’s not enough, here are three reasons you should reconsider your brand survey distribution plans.

• Your brand health is constantly changing: Biannual surveys used to make sense because up until recently, there were only a few ways to move the needle on brand perception. Now, social media and review sites have empowered consumers to speak their minds whenever the inspiration strikes. If you’re not consistently monitoring your online brand health, you’re likely missing vital feedback.
• Your survey design could lead to biased responses: You don’t know what you don’t know. Even now, an online conversation could impact how people will perceive your brand for months to come. Even the most intentional question list can return biased results if it’s not informed by accurate insights.
• You need timely insights: Brand health survey design and distribution takes a long time. If you need to understand how a current event is affecting your brand perception, you don’t have any time to waste.
• NPS and star ratings don’t provide the whole picture: Net promoter scores (NPS) and star rating systems aren’t the most dependable brand survey methods. They give you no contextual insights and are notoriously difficult to trust given that most users provide ratings arbitrarily. For example, ratings may depend on the mood of the customer or have nothing to do with the product but rather their interactions with staff. Unless there is a comment accompanying the rating, you have no way of getting actionable insights to improve your brand health.
• Ratings discount customer segmentation: Customer demographics play a key role in market research as brand experience may differ vastly based on segmentations such as age groups or ethnic backgrounds. For example, a resort may get different ratings from families with little children than from older guests based on the holiday, in-house entertainment facilities or proximity to transportation. That’s why blanket biannual brand surveys for customer ratings can give you skewed data.

Brand survey functionality across social networks

Brand surveys on social are typically used to gauge ad effectiveness. That said, they can also provide valuable insights into brand perception and awareness. If your team often relies on paid social, use any of the following in-network survey tools to get more out of your budget.

Twitter Brand Surveys

On Twitter, brands aren’t just part of the fun. Sometimes, they’re driving the fun themselves. Seven out of 10 Twitter users even say that “Brand Twitter” is one of the best parts of being present on the network.

Using Twitter Brand Surveys can help you better understand what drives brand lift among an already receptive audience. These surveys are typically used to measure awareness after repeat ad exposure. They can also be used to dig into message association for your brand and its competitors.

LinkedIn Brand Lift Tests

LinkedIn Brand Lift Surveys help marketers measure several brand awareness metrics as they run ads on the platform. The surveys use test and control groups to determine the overall effectiveness of an ad, alongside key perception metrics like brand favorability, familiarity and product consideration.

While these brand surveys are technically free, there are some strings attached. Marketers must spend a minimum ad budget of $90,000 in a given period to use the Brand Lift Survey feature.

Facebook Brand Survey Tests

With Facebook, you can use the Experiments tool to run a brand survey test. Like LinkedIn, these surveys reach a test and control group to calculate the impact a Facebook ad has on brand awareness and perception. These tools are particularly useful if you’re wondering how well an awareness campaign is resonating with a target audience.

There are minimum ad spend requirements to use Facebook’s brand survey tools, but they vary by country.

How to conduct rolling, real-time brand surveys with Sprout Social

In-network survey tools best measure brand awareness after repeat ad exposure. But that only scratches the surface of brand insights available on social media. According to The 2023 State of Social Media report, 95% of business leaders agree social media data and insights are important to inform business decisions outside of marketing.

Sixty-nine percent are already investing in social media tools, with 62% using listening features to capture all the conversations about your brand on social and review sites. This is crucial for meeting KPIs and keeping track of competitors as social listening helps synthesize discussions across social networks into actionable business insights. Here are three Sprout tools that will help you get it done.

1. Brand Health Social Listening Topics

Sprout’s Listening tool helps brands keep a pulse on the conversations that matter most. Think of it as a real-time focus group that provides honest, unfiltered feedback.

You can use five Listening Topic templates to tap into social insights at scale. For this case, let’s check out the Brand Health Topic Template.

The Brand Health Topic template will help you gauge the public perception of your brand or products. By using the right social listening platform you can decide what counts as a mention using the Query Builder, so you can factor in your brand name, popular product names, common misspellings and more. Whatever it takes to get a comprehensive picture of what people are saying about your brand online so you make improvements as needed such as better customer support or better-targeted content.

This ongoing analysis has several advantages to a traditional brand survey. Most notably, ongoing sentiment tracking.

Sprout’s social media sentiment analysis tool monitors the positive, negative and neutral mentions of your brand within a particular time period. It also provides vital details on how sentiment is trending over time.

2. Competitive Analysis Social Listening Topics

Brand health survey questions typically don’t assess your brand performance in a vacuum. Your competitors are an essential piece of the puzzle. In Sprout, you can track their public perception and compare it to yours using the Competitive Analysis Listening Topic Template.

This report will help you visualize your brand’s share of voice compared to competitors’. These insights are a critical tool in assessing what differentiates your brand from the competition, whether they’re indirect, direct or aspirational.

To get started, decide on a few priority competitors. Once you’ve created your shortlist, you can add their brand names and related keywords to the Listening Query Builder. Related keywords might include product names, branded hashtags or direct profile mentions. Finally, add in your brand information. The Listening Topic will backfill data for the past 30 days and continue to collect it over time for consistent, rolling insights.

3. Inbound Message Tagging and Tag Reports

Thirty-one percent of consumers prefer to leave feedback about products or services via social media, making it the most popular channel to do so. These messages are rich sources of brand health information and influence business decisions outside of marketing such as improving product features and customer care.

Sprout’s Tagging feature can help identify and organize incoming messages from across all social networks. You can then report on those Tags using the Tag Performance Report. This information can help you translate large volumes of customer feedback into actionable insights that illuminate your audience’s thoughts and feelings.

Creating this system requires ongoing collaboration with whichever team typically manages social support requests. This process may not seem natural at first, but it’s critical to breaking down information silos and accelerating time to insights.

The team at Grammarly, a cloud-based typing assistant, pulls this off by sharing quarterly reports on themes found within their social messages to keep others up to date on trends and opportunities they’re seeing in customer support.

Brand surveys: It’s not you, it’s them

Breaking up is hard to do. Still, when your current brand survey practices are standing in the way of faster, more accurate insights, you’ve got to rip off the bandage and say goodbye.

If you still find yourself wondering if you’re ready for what’s next, check out this social media market research worksheet. This tool will give you a framework for extracting unbiased audience feedback from social in less than two hours.

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Instagram hashtags: How to find and use the best hashtags

It’s a known fact that hashtags can help enhance and expand the reach of your content on social media.  When you use the hashtag or # symbol preceding a word or phrase, you’ve categorized your content with other similar content on social.

Instagram hashtags can help your Instagram content get discovered by an even larger audience than the one that already follows you on the platform. Including relevant hashtags in your captions or comment section helps improve the visibility of your posts.

Throughout this article, we”ll talk more about how to use hashtags on Instagram, the benefits they bring your brand and marketing strategy, top Instagram hashtags and more.

Table of Contents

• What are Instagram hashtags?
• How to use hashtags on Instagram
• 5 Benefits of hashtags on Instagram
• Top Instagram hashtags in 2023
• Top Instagram hashtag generators
• Types of Instagram hashtags
• Tracking and analyzing Instagram hashtags
• 7 Best practices for Instagram hashtags
• Get started with Instagram hashtags today

What are Instagram hashtags?

Instagram hashtags are words, phrases or numbers with the pound or hashtag symbol (#) in front of them in Instagram captions. Using this symbol categorizes your Instagram content and helps them be found more easily on the app.

Here’s an example of what an Instagram caption with hashtags might look like:

You can include up to 30 Instagram hashtags on one single post, though Instagram itself recommends sticking to between 3-5.

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A post shared by Instagram’s @Creators (@creators)

How to use hashtags on Instagram

Hashtags have several different uses that can help you grow your account and keep your content organized. Let’s run through a few of the main uses for Instagram hashtags.

Increase visibility on your posts

First, like we’ve mentioned, hashtags help increase visibility on your posts. Not only do hashtags make your posts come up in search results for keywords you’ve used, they also help fuel the Instagram algorithm. The algorithm will place posts in other users’ feeds based on their interest in the hashtags included within your post.

Invite user-generated content

Instagram hashtags are also a great way to invite users to create user-generated content (UGC) for you to share on your feeds. Highlight a branded hashtag in your Instagram bio for followers to engage with and so your team can easily find UGC photos. Here’s an example of what this might look like:

Categorize Instagram posts

You could also choose to use hashtags for more of an internal purpose, like categorizing your Instagram posts. For example, a clothing store called The Closet might use hashtags for their various products, like #TheClosetShoes, #TheClosetAccessories or #TheClosetDresses.

5 Benefits of hashtags on Instagram

Hashtags should be a major part of your Instagram marketing strategy. There are many use cases for them—but also many benefits. Let’s cover five major benefits that hashtags can provide.

1. Increases exposure & discovery

The biggest reason for using hashtags is for the increased exposure and discovery. Clicking on a hashtag in Instagram leads to a gallery of both the top posts and latest posts that used the hashtag.

From there, you’re able to explore all the related posts, making hashtags a great way for people interested in a certain topic to find more accounts to follow. This means that if you use the right and most relevant hashtags for your brand, others searching on that hashtag will find those posts.

In addition, your audience can use branded hashtags to show off their experiences with your products or services as a form of brand advocacy. Hashtags are good for overall brand awareness. Even clicking through one post on the search results page will lead you to other similar posts.

2. Encourages audience interactions

When you use branded hashtags and encourage their use, it becomes another form of engagement. Tagged feed posts are saved in search results and tagged Story posts are saved for the duration of the Story. Think of Instagram hashtags as just another way to reach and engage your customer base.

3. Competitor analysis

How much digital space are your competitors taking up in your market? Hashtags help you analyze your share of voice on social media. Chances are that you and your competitors will have overlapping hashtags, especially if you’re using industry and local ones. With a social media competitive analysis, you’ll be able to analyze the share of voice, sentiment and engagement of those posts.

In an ideal share of voice situation, your posts and ones that your customers have tagged are taking up the bulk of those hashtag search results. You can also check out posts with your relevant hashtags for content inspiration and to get ideas on where your brand might be falling short compared to competitor content.

4. Content research

Similar to what you would do for SEO keyword research, hashtags can help you research different content ideas. Say you want to increase your share of voice in the #NaturalSkincare hashtag. That’s rather tough since there are over 9.8 million posts using the hashtag.

However, you can use the search results page’s Top tab to see what the best posts have been. Use this area as inspiration.

What seems to be working for similar brands? Is there a certain style or caption that’s trending now? By clicking into top posts for details, you might also be able to find additional hashtags that are less highly populated, but just as relevant to your audience, similar to secondary keywords for search optimization.

5. Links digital and IRL campaigns

Go shopping in any retail store these days and chances are that you’ll come across a marketing campaign with a hashtag attached. Whether they encourage you to use their general brand hashtag or a campaign one, hashtags offer an easy way to connect digital and in-real-life campaigns.

Top Instagram hashtags in 2023

If there’s one rule to keep in mind when using Instagram hashtags, it’s to always keep them relevant to your business and the content you’re posting. However, there’s nothing wrong with using popular hashtags in your industry—so to help you find those, here are some of the top Instagram hashtags of 2023 for a variety of different industries.

Top 50 Instagram hashtags in 2023

1. #love (2.1B)
2. #instagood (1.6B)
3. #instagram (1.1B)
4. #art (1B)
5. #photooftheday (1B)
6. #photography (1B)
7. #beautiful (823M)
8. #picoftheday (720M)
9. #happy (698M)
10. #follow (695M)
11. #instadaily (639M)
12. #tbt (583M)
13. #repost (557M)
14. #summer (548M)
15. #like4like (514M)
16. #reels (509M)
17. #instalike (502M)
18. #photo (488M)
19. #me (454M)
20. #selfie (451M)
21. #music (441M)
22. #friends (438M)
23. #life (436M)
24. #smile (435M)
25. #family (435M)
26. #girl (426M)
27. #trending (372M)
28. #model (358M)
29. #design (353M)
30. #motivation (351M)
31. #handmade (345M)
32. #lifestyle (343M)
33. #likeforlike (328M)
34. #sunset (323M)
35. #artist (316M)
36. #dogsofinstagram (307M)
37. #beach (294M)
38. #amazing (287M)
39. #drawing (286M)
40. #nofilter (285M)
41. #cat (282M)
42. #instamood (279M)
43. #igers (277M)
44. #sun (270M)
45. #sky (260M)
46. #follow4follow (250M)
47. #funny (236M)
48. #l4l (221M)
49. #followforfollow (212M)
50. #tagsforlikes (191M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for B2B

1. #b2b (3M)
2. #work (147B)
3. #smallbusiness (121M)
4. #business (109M)
5. #entrepreneur (99.4M)
6. #success (87.9M)
7. #marketing (75.8M)
8. #digitalmarketing (29.7M)
9. #sales (20.4M)
10. #ecommerce (14.2M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for fashion and beauty

1. #fashion (1.1B)
2. #style (641M)
3. #beauty (528M)
4. #ootd (426M)
5. #makeup (395M)
6. #hair (242M)
7. #fashionblogger (165M)
8. #shopping (154M)
9. #outfit (146M)
10. #fashionista (136M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for fitness

1. #fitness (520M)
2. #gym (254M)
3. #workout (216M)
4. #fit (191M)
5. #health (164M)
6. #training (140M)
7. #fitnessmotivation (139M)
8. #bodybuilding (134M)
9. #fitfam (123M)
10. #goals (111M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for food, beverage and restaurants

1. #food (507M)
2. #foodporn (300M)
3. #foodie (241M)
4. #instafood (237M)
5. #yummy (199M)
6. #delicious (148M)
7. #foodstagram (119M)
8. #foodphotography (109M)
9. #foodblogger (83.8M)
10. #foodlover (77.3M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for technology and software

1. #technology (26.4M)
2. #tech (19.7M)
3. #engineering (14.8M)
4. #innovation (14.2M)
5. #programming (6.6M)
6. #computer (6.5M)
7. #coding (6.1M)
8. #electronics (5.9M)
9. #software (5.9M)
10. #instatech (2.1M)

Top 10 Instagram hashtags for travel

1. #nature (782M)
2. #travel (697M)
3. #explore (489M)
4. #naturephotography (230M)
5. #travelphotography (216M)
6. #travelgram (173M)
7. #wanderlust (149M)
8. #adventure (143M)
9. #instatravel (125M)
10. #travelblogger (84.9M)

Top Instagram hashtag generators

If none of the keywords we compiled above fit your business (or you want to find more options), you can use a hashtag generator tool to help. Here are the top six Instagram hashtag generators you might want to try to build the perfect list of hashtags for your business.

1. Sistrix Instagram Hashtag Generator

The Sistrix hashtag generator tool is easy to use—but only allows limited use with a free account. You can get 25 free queries a day before you’ll need to pay for a premium account. Twenty-five queries is quite a lot, so you may be able to get by without needing to upgrade.

Simply type a or a few hashtags into the text box and press the Enter/Return key to get the best 30 hashtags relating to your initial search. Pick out the most relevant ones to add onto your post.

2. Keyword Tool

Keyword Tool is a useful tool that can help brands find keywords across a number of sites—including hashtags for Instagram. With this option, you can even use some geolocation to ensure you’re finding top hashtags in a certain area. This is a plus for local brick-and-mortar businesses who only service customers in a specified location. It also has the option to select which language you want hashtags to appear in.

Type your initial hashtag or keyword into the text box, change the filters if needed, then click the magnifying glass icon. The results you’ll receive are limited for the free account—just a list of hashtags without details on their usage. But if you want more information, you can upgrade to a paid account. Plans start at $69/month.

3. Inflact

Inflact is an AI-based hashtag generator that can help come up with hashtag ideas based on a keyword, photo, or existing Instagram post. This can be useful if you’re not even sure of which keyword to start with—or if you simply want to see what the tool would come up with for your photo.

Once you input your query, the tool will provide you with hashtags from three categories based on how often the hashtag is used: Frequent (hard to rank in top posts), Average (medium chance of ranking) and Rare (easy to rank). The tool also gives you a recommendation of how many hashtags to use from each category.

4. Toolzu

Toolzu is similar to Inflact in the ways you can start your hashtag query. Input your information (either keyword, URL or photo), then click Generate Hashtags to get started. This tool will generate the volume of posts using the hashtag and how difficult it may be to get viewers using the hashtag.

Toolzu also has iOS and Android apps so you can easily search for hashtags on the go while you’re on your mobile device.

5. Display Purposes

Display Purposes will provide you with a list of hashtags based on a starting point. Type a few hashtags into the text box to get started. Each suggested hashtag generated is scored based on relevancy to our query and popularity. Daily Purposes offers another tool that will scan your profile and come up with hashtags based on the content you’ve already been posting, which is a useful feature.

6. All Hashtags

All Hashtag can generate hashtags based on a single keyword. Choose whether you want top results, random results or results for hashtags that are currently trending. You’ll get a list of the best 30 hashtags based on your query. The tool has a “Copy” button making it easy to immediately copy all 30 hashtags and paste them into your caption or comment. Remember to limit the number of hashtags you use per post for best practices and quality engagement.

Types of Instagram hashtags

There are a few different types of hashtags that brands should know about, each with its own benefit and application. Learn more about the types of Instagram hashtags you’ll want to use.

Branded & product hashtags

Branded and product hashtags are hashtags that you create with your brand and/or product name in them. These are often used for gathering UGC and increasing brand awareness.

Here’s an example of a branded hashtag. Plant store The Sill uses the hashtag #PlantsMakePeopleHappy in their Instagram bio. They’ve also created product videos surrounding this hashtag.

If you click the hashtag, you’ll see that there are 12 million posts in the results, meaning it’s a popular and well-used branded hashtag. All of the posts included are relevant to The Sill’s content as well, so they can easily reach out to people posting content under that hashtag to ask if they can feature it on their own feed.

Campaign hashtags

Campaign hashtags are specific to marketing campaigns that you’re running. Usually, these involve the brand running a regular campaign and adding a hashtag to it in a caption or in the corner of the post.

One example of a campaign hashtag is the #EssenceFestxTarget one used to promote their recent collaboration. For all posts related to this campaign, both Target and Essence Festival will use the unique hashtag, as well as any influencers they work with.

Campaign hashtags don’t need to be tied to a product or sales. REI’s #OptOutside campaign encouraged people to go out rather than shop on Black Friday, and therefore wasn’t centered around purchasing.

Community & industry hashtags

Nearly every brand community and industry has at least one hashtag that’s used within them. To find yours, head to some popular community and industry influencer posts and check out their hashtags. Many of these hashtags are simple. The hashtags that are easy to think up are usually the most used.

For craft beer enthusiasts, several exist: #CraftBeerLover, #CraftBeerLife and #CraftBeerNotCrapBeer are just a few of them. As you can see, all three of these are pretty straightforward and natural to think up, and include in posts for relevant brands.

Location hashtags

Location hashtags are pretty self-explanatory. Most brands are based somewhere and if you have a physical location, this is even more useful for you. Relevant location hashtags include your city and its associated topical hashtags, your neighborhood, the mall name you’re in and any other defining features.

One example is the above #chseats. This is one of those location + topic hashtags. The posts tagged with these are relevant for anyone searching for food recommendations or users in the Charleston, SC area. Other location hashtags to explore include any branded ones that your city’s and state’s tourism boards have already established.

Themed or holiday hashtags

Participating in relevant social media holidays can be a fun way to engage your audience. Things like #InternationalSushiDay and #InternationalDogDay can be great for sushi restaurants and veterinary offices to post about.

One of the hashtags we mentioned, International Sushi Day, is on June 18, and on Instagram, the hashtag has over 23k posts. This is perfect for sushi restaurants and sushi-adjacent businesses to post about.

Daily hashtags

Daily hashtags aren’t limited to Instagram and they’re easy to find. These hashtags include the day of the week and a specified topic. There are generalized ones such as #MondayMotivation and #ThrowbackThursday. Nearly any brand can take part in these, and there are plenty of niche topics covered.

These hashtags cover more interest-based topics and also happen to be daily. For example, on #MonsteraMonday, plant lovers post a photo of their monstera plants. These daily hashtags take a little more work to find but if you’re following influencers in specific fields, you’ll see them in your feed.

Trending hashtags

This type of hashtag is one of the more difficult ones to post since it involves keeping tabs on the latest and knowing how to apply them to your brand.

For example, one of the trending memes at the moment is a superimposed video of Jennifer Lawrence from the Hot Ones wing-eating challenge crying and asking, “What do you mean?” over and over again. By searching the hashtag #WhatDoYouMean, we can see a number of brands and creators using this meme for their content.

Keep in mind that memes and trends are short-lived. You need to catch on early to participate and reap the benefits of jumping on the trend. You may need to up your trendspotting skills for social media to get the most out of jumping on memes and trends in a timely and brand-relevant way that resonates.

Tracking and analyzing Instagram hashtags

So you’ve decided on all of your hashtags and you’re ready to get started on the new social strategy. What’s next? Checking in on how all these hashtags are working out for you. Tracking your hashtag analytics is important to ensure you’re improving performance with the ones you chose. If not, you may need to find better hashtags to use.

As you start to use the same hashtags, you’ll start noticing when you receive more engagement or more spam comments. To make sure that you’re using the right hashtags for you, find a social media tool that offers Instagram hashtag analytics.

Sprout Social’s Outbound Hashtag Performance Report keeps track of all the hashtags you use on posts as well as their performance. With one glance, you’ll notice which hashtags you use the most and which ones get the most engagement.

These two may not generate the same results, especially if you’re switching up the hashtags for posts. By reviewing your analytics, you might end up finding that your most relied-on hashtags are not actually the ones resonating the most with audiences.

7 Best practices for Instagram hashtags

Gone are the days where hashtags were new and brands threw in every popular hashtag, regardless of its relevance. While there’s no single right way to use hashtags on Instagram, there are some best practices to improve performance. Here are several to think about:

1. Test how many hashtags to use on Instagram

How many hashtags should you use? This is a tricky question because the answer varies wildly. If you’re including them within your caption, stick to 3 to 5—like Instagram recommends. If you’re going to use the first comment for hashtags, then up to the full 30 hashtags would be acceptable. However, this is not to say that you should use 30 hashtags for every post. This leads us to our next tip.

2. Use hashtags in the first comment

Too many hashtags in a caption can overwhelm valuable real estate and make posts look messy. Keep captions minimal, and if you’re using more hashtags, move them to a comment. With Sprout’s Compose box, you can schedule the first Instagram comment along with your post and caption.

3. Find the best hashtags for you

There are several ways to find the best hashtags for your brand. The first and easiest is to look at the influencers and accounts you already follow and note which hashtags they’re already using. Another way is to begin brainstorming various ones and type them into the Instagram search bar. As you type, related hashtags also show up.

In the example above, #coffee is such a popular hashtag that using it might result in more spam comments than you want. Instead, scroll further down the results to find more niche ones that are targeted and relevant to your audience.

4. Follow relevant hashtags

Instagram offers the ability to follow any hashtag’s search results. When you do this, these posts appear in your feed, alongside all the other posts from accounts you follow. This is a good tactic to use for following industry or community hashtags because it helps you keep tabs on them. It should not be used as a solution for branded hashtags, though, because it doesn’t guarantee that every post will show up in your feed.

The above example uses #PlantMom as the hashtag. Simply hit that follow button to stay informed on that Instagram hashtag.

5. Encourage the use of branded hashtags

Once you’ve created your list of branded hashtags, make sure to start using them in every relevant post. The most general branded hashtags are often placed in the Instagram bio along with a call-to-action for using them.

In the above example, Grove Collaborative puts their branded hashtag #GroveHome in their IG bio. Customers can then use this hashtag whenever they post about the brand. It makes it easy for Grove to find and share those photos on their own feed.

6. Create a list of hashtags

Instead of copying and pasting the same set of hashtags for every post, divide them up into topical ones. For example, your education posts might have different hashtags than a new product announcement post. Instead of generating a new list for each post, keep different lists handy for the various types of content topics that you post.

Save these types of list sand text Sprout’s Asset Library to make it easier to attach the right hashtags to each Instagram post.

7. Add hashtags to Instagram Stories

While Stories do disappear after 24 hours, don’t discount the use of hashtags on them. These show up in the search results, too, and are another easy way of getting more interested followers. Have too many hashtags to put into a Story? Enter your text like normal and then hide them behind a gif or sticker.

Get started with Instagram hashtags today

Using hashtags on Instagram has many benefits for brands: increased brand awareness, higher engagement engagement and improved competitor analysis insight. Before jumping into hashtags, it’s recommended to understand the various types that are out there and some best practices to follow.

Ready to get into more #InstagramStrategy? Take a look at how to create an Instagram strategy for your brand.

The post Instagram hashtags: How to find and use the best hashtags appeared first on Sprout Social.

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