Social Media Setbacks: Creation Of Your Instagram Hashtags
- Roslyn Wertheimer
- Oct 30, 2019
- 3 min read
Hi there. I haven’t written one of these in a long while. But, I just got back from a rather ‘meh’ dinner, that involved some rather delicious chips and chunky salsa, but alas, dry tacos. That has nothing to do with the content to follow, but I thought you should know where I’m mentally at as I’m writing this.
Also, I just got a new laptop, so I’m trying to take advantage of that honeymoon stage that you feel with a new computer and will (hopefully) start back up my writing a lot more.
If you didn’t know (and honestly, how could you know, it’s been so long), I used to write about things that just didn’t make sense within the world of social media. It usually was about how certain features within platforms just weren’t correctly executed, or were just missing that extra final touch. I also took the time to write out my feelings in general about the ways we use social media, whether good or bad. For instance, there was a time in 2016 (pre-election, because there was a time before that) when I just couldn’t understand the use of Twitter anymore.
But anyways, I feel strongly enough to come back and write something that has been on my mind for a while. Honestly, more than just my mind, because I’ve seen and heard people complaining about this.
Ok, here we go. Trust me, it’s not as dramatic as I’m making it seem.
Where is the dang word count on Instagram captions?
See? Told you this one wasn’t going to be that intense.
But it’s true. Actually, it’s not really the word count on your actual caption, but in fact, the word count on the hashtags that you use. If you are an active hashtag user, you should know that only 30 hashtags are allowed in your caption when posting on Instagram. A lot of people have different techniques when it comes to posting and creating hashtags (which is probably a whole other blog post). For instance, when it comes to the way I post hashtags, I have different categories in my Notes app for different types of content. One for black & white photos, concert photography, dog photography, the list goes (embarrassingly) on.
Others just have a set group of hashtags that they will use for every post, copy and paste it, and edit it slightly to make them more relevant to their content. However, there are those that take the time and some risks to just create hashtags on the spot. This is where that word count would come in.
You see, if you create your well-worded caption and then start freely writing out hashtags, and you happen to go over 30 hashtags and press ‘share’ when you are done…..
POOF. GONE. Instagram doesn’t ever tell you: ‘hey, you went over the hashtag limit, try again.’
Nope, it uploads your content, but just without any of the hashtags OR caption you created. All of that you created, is gone. You are left with a picture, and nothing else. Which is wildly frustrating when you created everything from scratch, and you didn’t save it anywhere.
So here are my solutions. One for the user, one for Instagram.
For the user: Create separate notes within your phone, and count out how many you have. You can make ones with 30 hashtags, and call it a day. Or you can make a set amount of 20, knowing that once you copy and paste it into Instagram, you have the freedom to add 10 more that are more related to your content that you’re uploading.
For Instagram: Take some notes from Twitter. Twitter very kindly lets you know when you’ve run out of characters. Your extra text turns red, and they let you know how many characters you are over so you know what to delete. So how about when someone happens to write that 31st hashtag, it automatically gets highlighted a different color, that way you know you have gone over the limit.
Ok, but also. Don't use 30 hashtags, unless you don't care that it looks a little 'spammy'. Using 10 is just fine.
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That’s all from me tonight. I can’t wait to start this series back up again, and write more posts. This was fun.
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