There are a lot of blog posts out there about how to create a great Instagram post, and most of it is common sense so we won't delve too far into that. What we will talk about is the stuff that accompanies a post - the comments and hashtag.

What surprisingly people understand is how hashtags work. There are a lot of people (and I mean a lot) who constantly go through hashtags as their way of finding new posts to see and new people to follow.
The search results page for a hashtag on Instagram has two sections: Popular and Recent.

The goal, given that such is the case, is simply to use the right hashtags so that we get in front of those people. In essence the more we post with a hashtag and the more hashtags we use the more we'll be seen. So let's find the best ones.

A really great way to find popular hashtags is using tagsforlikes. It monitors Instagram and gives you a list of the most-liked hashtags within a given category (injecting its own hashtags, which is a little annoying, but what can you do).

There's even a tagsforlikes iPhone app if you want to have these hashtags easily accessible.

What not many people realize is that your posts don't only show up based on the hashtags in your original post - they also show up for the hashtags in your comments. That means that if you really wanted to, you could sit there and drop in five different comments full of hashtags and push your photo to the top of hundreds of hashtags. The timestamp for your photo, however, remains the same, so if you really want to be seen you have to do it quick. You will get the majority of the likes from people who don't follow you in the first 10-15 minutes you post a photo, so optimize for that.