As any social media manager can tell you, hashtags can be great for expanding your reach and building brand awareness. If you use the wrong ones, your post might languish in obscurity forever.
But what happens if you put the right hashtags in the wrong location?
The team at Hootsuite has long wondered: Do Instagram hashtags belong in the caption or the comments? Does hashtag location even matter?
To satisfy our collective curiosity, I embarked on an experiment to get to the bottom of things.
Bonus: Download a free guide to discover which hashtags to use to boost traffic and target customers on social media. And then learn how you can use Hootsuite to measure results.
In 2021, Instagram’s official Creators account stated that hashtags should go in the caption. We’ve followed this advice ever since, diligently putting hashtags at the end of the caption in our scheduled posts without ever questioning it.
But recently, we got to thinking: hashtags in the comments are just as clickable as hashtags in the caption, aren’t they? Why would Instagram make those hashtags clickable if they weren’t functional? And if A = B = C, does it really matter if the hashtag is in the caption or in a comment?
My guess? A hashtag is a hashtag, regardless of location, so it shouldn’t matter whether it appears in the caption or the comments. I decided to use my own business Instagram account to test this hypothesis.
Methodology
As a dedicated social media scientist, I wanted to make sure I gathered enough data, so my experiment spanned three weeks.
Here’s what I did:
- I published 5 pairs of posts (10 posts in total) for my vintage home decor business account, Dwelling on the Past
- Each pair of posts had similar images and captions
- One post from each pair had the hashtags in the captions, while the other post had the hashtags as a comment
- I published the posts from each pair a few days apart to avoid oversaturating my audience with the same content
- I made sure to post at roughly the same time of day to ensure that timing didn’t affect my results
- I checked the metrics for each post after 72 hours
Before starting this experiment, I followed Instagram’s official best practices, only posting hashtags in the caption and using 3-5 hashtags per post. I’d never tried putting the hashtags in a comment before.
Here is a sample pair of comparable posts. The images and caption copy are very similar, and they were posted around the same time a few days apart.
This post has the hashtags in the caption:
This post has the hashtags in the comments:
Source: Dwelling on the Past
Results
Once I had published five pairs of posts, I examined the reach and engagement for each post.
Since Instagram has stated that hashtags should go in the caption, I looked at those numbers first:
Hashtags in Caption
| Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Average per post | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reach | 224 | 185 | 185 | 162 | 186 | 188.4 |
| Engagement | 14 | 17 | 12 | 27 | 22 | 18.4 |
Next, I checked out my posts with the hashtags in the comments to see how those had performed:
Hashtags in Comments
| Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Average per post | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reach | 477 | 193 | 327 | 190 | 326 | 302.6 |
| Engagement | 61 | 16 | 22 | 20 | 36 | 31 |
Both my reach and engagement were over 60% higher when I put the hashtags in the comments of my post. Wow!
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What do the results mean?
After conducting this experiment, it seems that my posts with the hashtags in the comments performed better than those with the hashtags in the caption. These results are unexpected, since they seem to contradict Instagram’s own guidance about hashtag placement!
But just because I had good luck with putting the hashtags in the comments doesn’t mean that location actually matters. I decided to investigate my own Explore page to see if it reflected my findings.
To do this, I took a look at the 10 suggested posts that appeared at the top of the page:
Out of these ten posts, seven had the hashtags in the caption and three had no hashtags at all. None of the posts had hashtags in the comments, which is in line with Instagram’s advice.
After all this analysis, I believe that the original hypothesis is correct: Hashtags are important to Instagram reach, but it doesn’t matter where you post them.
Hashtag generator: free tool
Want to run your own experiment but need a little help coming up with hashtags?
Our free hashtag generator creates hashtag suggestions in 5 languages. Give it a try!
Please note: This tool may display inaccurate or offensive material that doesn’t represent Hootsuite’s views. You’re solely responsible for use of any content generated using this tool, including its compliance with applicable laws and third party rights.
Takeaways
Is it better to put my Instagram hashtags in the caption or the comments?
The best place for your hashtags might depend on lots of factors, including the size of your account, the type of content you post, and how frequently you post. What works for one account may not work for another. The best thing to do is to experiment with hashtag placement to see what works best for your content.
Where should I put hashtags on my Instagram posts?
To figure out where to put your hashtags, we recommend experimenting with hashtag placement to see what works. Follow these steps to run your own experiment:
- Publish a few pairs of posts with similar images and captions
- For each pair, put the hashtags for one post in the captions and the hashtags for the other post in a comment
- Post at roughly the same time of day to ensure that timing didn’t affect your results
- Check the metrics for each post after 72 hours
You can check Instagram’s native analytics on each post to gather these metrics, or use a tool like Hootsuite Analytics to compare the data quickly and easily.
What happens if I put my Instagram hashtags in the comments?
Like we’ve mentioned, hashtags are important to Instagram reach, but it doesn’t matter where you post them. That said, putting your hashtags in the comments can make automation a challenge.
If you schedule posts in advance, you’ll have to hop back on Instagram to add your comment with the hashtags after the post is published. If you’re looking for a set-and-forget solution, put your hashtags in the post caption.
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