I’m forever loving and hating Instagram. It’s fun and addictive but hard to get heard. It’s full of people trying to get you to join pyramid schemes and buy those body wraps. It’s rife with bot comments and people that follow and unfollow you two days later.

Frustrating as hell.

Because of this, I stopped using hashtags altogether because it’s not worth the hassle. It seems the more hashtags you put, the more spam you get.

To make life a little easy, I started using hashtag generators to get me some ideas for tags.

The idea behind these sites is that you type in a keyword and get 30 hashtags you can easily cut and paste into your post.

Thing is, only 10 of these 30 hashtags might be relevant, so you then spend time deleted and adding different ones.

If you’re like me, you probably post the same photos time and time again. I post fitness photos, food, going out, travel mostly. So here’s what I did.

I used the notes app on my iPhone and made a note for hashtags. Inside it, I can find lists of hashtags already grouped by topic ready to go.

I used all hashtags to find the hashtags I wanted to use and then grouped them into a list according to the topic. I do sometimes have to edit it slightly, but it’s mostly the same.

Here’s a few example of a few of my lists:

Holiday:

#holiday #holidays #happyholidays #holidayseason #bankholiday #holidayparty #boat #instaholiday #summerholiday #happyholiday #holidayspirit #familyholiday #ocean #holiday2017 #holidaytime #summerholidays #turtlebay #boattrip #holidays2017 #holidayfun #greece #holidayweekend #zante

After the gym:

#gym #gymlife #girlswholift #gymtime #gymmotivation #fitbit #gymaddict #fitbitblaze #gymselfie #gymgirl #gymwear #gymnast #instagym #GymJunkie #workout #workoutmotivation #workouttime #workoutvideo #homeworkout #GirlsWhoWorkou #cardioworkout #coreworkout #workoutoftheday

Diet:

#diet #dieting #soshalpe #HealthyDiet #dietfood #instadiet #cleandiet #balanceddiet #flexiblediet #energydiet #dietplan #tryitordiet #diets #weightloss #soshapechallenge

Eating out:

#food #foodporn #foodie #instafood #healthyfood #foodgasm #foodstagram #foodpics #foodphotography #foodpic #foodblogger #foodlover #foods #fitfood  #goodfood #foodgram #lovefood #foodlovers #fooddiary #cleanfood

Of course, I do edit these as I upload a new photo as it’s important not go use too many hashtags. Instagram won’t let you use more than 30 and you might be a bit worried about looking a bit spammy.

Find out what works out best in terms of engagement and stick to that.

What hashtags do you use?