Got into it with a buddy about hashtags... made me question everything

I was talking with my friend Carlos last night, he runs a small craft account on Instagram with like 8k followers. He swore up and down that using 30 hashtags per post is the only way to get seen, says his reach doubled after he started jamming them in. But I've been trimming down to 5 targeted ones and seeing steady growth, like 15% more engagement over 3 months. He argued that the algorithm needs volume to categorize your content, but I think it just looks spammy now. Does the algorithm actually need that many tags to spread posts, or is he stuck in 2018 strategy? Anyone else go back and forth on this with someone and change their mind?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew_rodriguez26d ago

Yeah and I bet half those hashtags are just attracting bots instead of real people who actually care about the content.

lopez.simon26d ago

Did you ever see that one post where someone used #love and got followed by like 20 different bot accounts selling foot creams... it was wild.