The Fine Art of Lateral Hashtagging

Going beyond the reach of standard hashtags, on Instagram, with some lateral thinking

The typical basic hashtags used by restaurants are #foodie #foodgasm #citynamefoodclub. Fashion brands use tags like #instafashion #shoes #skirt. An environmental NGOs use tags like #conservation #marine #pollution and so on. Nothing wrong here. These hashtags will bring you the people looking for these specific topics of interest.

To go beyond people looking specifically for your offerings, start thinking about other features that may be acceptable to a wider audience. To draw on a brick and mortar example in the real world that is popular the world over, and not yet in India— IKEA’s famous coffee shops in their massive stores. Their coffee shops themselves have become a destination for people in the big cities around the world. And while some of these customers come primarily to enjoy the services of this fantastic café, they also stumble across furniture that they may incorporate into their homes. It also keeps their store constantly busy and vibrant.

The same applies to your Instagram feed with Lateral Hashtagging. Lateral Hashtagging is literally the hashtags that are not directly connected to your core content, but goes one step outside the box.

Taking the examples online, a restaurant that has invested massively on décor, should seriously consider hashtags like #decor, #architecture and #interiors. Perhaps even tag the interior decorator’s firm. While people stumble across the Instagram feed for décor, they can quite possibly be enamored by the food and beverage content as well.

Taking an example events-wise, an art gallery may be of interest to artists, art-lovers, fashion enthusiasts, people looking for ‘what’s happening in town’. So don’t just stick to #painter, #art, #mfhussain, but go beyond that into tags like #fashion, #whatshot and #bangalore, as this event is also relevant to audiences beyond the pure art space.

An NGO that is focused on conservation should also consider using hashtags ranging from #turtles, #rhinos and #tigers to general tags like #andamanandnicobar, #kaziranga and #sundarbands, even if they are focused solely on just one of these aspects. After all, you will find plenty of overlap of interest in these topics, across species and geographies.

The caution here is to not overdo the lateral hashtagging. A safe thumbrule is to do this once in 5 posts. Or else you could possibly end up with too dilute a following, or worse, a following that marks your page as irrelevant in their head. And that is something that you never want to do.

(Image credits: reuters)