Social media platforms are perhaps the ultimate way to express your passion for nature. And Instagram provides fantastic opportunities for nature-loving photographers to showcase their talents. Massive numbers of Instagram influencers sharing as many as 95 million photographs daily. It’s even becoming increasingly difficult to gain visibility. As many as 70 percent of posts go unseen! Hashtags make it easier for interested users to find your content. But you need to make sure you’re using the right hashtags for your field of expertise. Using the best nature lover hashtags improves your chances of success.
Top 10 Nature Lover Hashtags on Instagram
#photooftheday
The Photo of the Day hashtag is a popular choice on Instagram. The account of the same name serves as a community hub, curating some of the best photographs on the platform. Tagging your best photograph each day as #photooftheday means you may get featured by the account. That will certainly have a positive effect on your follower figures. But the tag has several disadvantages, the most obvious being that it’s hugely popular, with over 540 million uses. That means your chances of gaining visibility are very slim. Furthermore, it’s a generic tag that doesn’t focus on nature. When you’re trying to build an audience, it’s often better to use hashtags that deliver your content to people who have a clear interest in your subject matter, rather than delivering the content to as many people as possible.
#naturehub
Getting involved with an Instagram community is a good way of spreading your content to a wider audience.
Nature Hub is similar to Photo of the Day. But this tag caters exclusively to nature lovers and is therefore a better option for nature photographers. Don’t be fooled by the smaller following (68,400 followers compared to 268,000 followers). Since fewer Instagram users use #naturehub, it’s easier for your content to stand out from the crowd.
#nature
If you’re taking nature photographs, #nature seems like an obvious choice. It’s one of the most commonly used nature-related tags, with over 330 million uses as of June 2018. The downside is the same as with many of the other commonly used hashtags. It may not be specific enough to attract your core demographic. And it’s going to be difficult to make your work stand out.
#naturelover
A good way to get additional attention is to make sure your post appears in the most recent posts on a feed for as long as possible. Unfortunately, this is incredibly difficult for the most popular hashtags. For example, research indicates that posts to a hashtag with 10 million posts disappear from the first nine posts in the feed within three minutes. The #naturelover tag has over 14 million uses. So, while content still disappears rapidly, it hangs around for a bit longer than the posts to #nature.
#landscape
When looking for hashtags that are the best fit for your brand, it’s a balancing act between tags that are popular enough to increase the amount of impressions each post gets, and tags that are niche enough to improve the level of engagement by appealing more to the people who do see them. When selecting nature lover hashtags, consider those that have close ties with the type of photograph you’re posting, such as #landscape for landscape shots. Other useful tags for landscape photographers include #sunset, #sunrise, and #beach.
#animals
Animal photography is very popular, as evidenced by the fact that #animals has been used over 43 million times on Instagram. Unfortunately, it’s a relatively broad hashtag, so followers are just as likely to see pictures of family pets as they are to see pictures of animals in nature.
#wildlife
The #wildlife tag is much more specific than #animals, making it a better choice for wildlife photographers. Using #wildlifephotography may be even better, as it’s still very popular, but has far fewer uses, making content in the feed easier to find.
#igersnature
On Instagram, #igers (short for Instagrammers) is very popular, with over 233 million uses. It’s the calling card of professional Instagram users. And, it has spawned a number of related tags specific to particular industries and interests. The #igersnature hashtag has over 239,000 uses, making it a good one for raising the profile of quality content.
#planetearth
If you travel the globe, snapping nature in different countries and capturing the beauty of the natural world, #planetearth is a good choice. Whenever you post, use geo-tagging, as including a location increases engagement by as much as 79 percent.
#hiking
Quality is better than quantity, and if you want to build an audience of people who are interested in your particular brand of nature-loving content, you need to use hashtags that cater to specific demographics. Rather than tagging the photographs from your nature walks as #landscape, consider #hiking to appeal to a niche market.
Selecting the Best Nature Lover Hashtags
When you’re selecting the best nature lover hashtags, it’s important to keep in mind what you’re hoping to achieve as part of your social media strategy. If you want to gain as many impressions as possible, the best choice may be a generic tag such as #nature.
Conversely, if you want to improve engagement and build a core audience of people who are really interested in your work, it may be a better idea to use hashtags that are more precise, such as #hiking or #flowersphotography. You also need to consider seasonality and trends. For example, during the fall, you may want to focus on using hashtags relating to the fall in conjunction with images using autumnal colors.
If you do your research, consider what terms are trending and which most users might search for, look at what other content creators are doing, and maintain the quality of your posts, then using the best nature lover hashtags has the potential to grow your audience naturally, in a way you’ll love.
