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Are you a cyclist on Instagram? Then you’ll want to know about the best instagram cycling hashtags to use when you post your photos.
#Hashtag What?
Quick recap for people who aren’t sure what a hashtag is. Think of it like a keyword that helps to describe or categorise your image. The beauty of hashtags is that they are clickable, and searchable, so that you can quickly pull up a feed of images tagged with a certain keyword.
Why is this useful?
Hashtags help you find images and more importantly, connect with the people who posted them, around specific themes. Let’s pretend we just got a new state of the art gizmo, and we wanted to a) show it off, and b) connect with other people who are into the same gizmos. Simply post an image using an appropriate hashtag and you’ll soon be attracting likes and follows from similarly minded gizmo fanciers.
The obvious, predictable cycling hashtags
Yes, of course you can use #cycling, #cycle, #cyclist and all are popular. But perhaps they’re too generic. How many people are regularly searching for images on generic topics? If you can get a bit more specific with your hashtags, the quality of the shots seems to go up. Plus, a major factor with high traffic hashtags is that your freshly posted image soon gets buried by all the incoming ones.
If you’re looking to connect with people in a meaningful way, then it makes sense to get a bit specific with your tags.
If you’re just looking to try to reach the maximum number of people, I’ve added in brackets the number of approx pics on instagram tagged against each hashtag, at the time of writing, February 2017.
I’ve also created a swipe file you can download for free, to quickly copy/paste the tags you want into your own instagram posts. More about that later…
Generic instagram cycling hashtags
These hashtags are all pretty generic to cycling and a general love of being a cyclist. They’re all hashtags that you’d probably be able to guess, even if you didn’t know they were popular. They’re obvious ones, in that sense.
I’ve ranked them in order, but the swipe file (download below) contains just the hashtags that you can copy/paste straight into your posts.
Be aware that there is always going to be some crossover between cycling and motorcyles, and the hashtags that tend to feature “bike” seem to have more motorcycle content.
#CYCLING (9.5 million)
#ROADBIKE (1.6 million)
#CYCLIST (1 million)
#BIKESTAGRAM (892K)
#CYCLINGLIFE (827K)
#STRAVACYCLING (449K)
#ROADCYCLING (437K)
#INSTACYCLING (256K)
#RIDEYOURBIKE (195K)
#ILOVEMYBIKE (138K)
#CYCLISTS (121K)
#LOVECYCLING (102K)
#INSTACYCLE (51K)
#CYCLINGLOVE (34K)
#INSTABICYCLE (28K)
#CYCLISTLIFE (27K)
Download the hashtag swipe file!
Popular instagram cycling hastags that you wouldn’t intuitively be able to guess.
In case you’re wondering, WYMTM is short for What You Missed This Morning. WYMTE = What You Missed This Evening.
#OUTSIDEISFREE (1.1 Million)
#FROMWHEREIRIDE (411K)
#WTMTM (309K)
#ROADSLIKETHESE (168K)
#ROADPORN (58K)
#WYMTE (6K)
Do you want to take your Instagram account to the next level?
There’s a great piece of software called Instamate that can help you to find the most popular content on instagram, with integrated tools to re-post and even annotate images. You can even queue up images to post in a schedule, to keep your feed active.
Find out more about Instamate. (the new version is about to come out)
Instagram hashtags for cycling kit
What’s better than riding your bike? Looking great while you ride your bike! Here’s a selection of instagram cycling hashtags for showing off your kit.
#SOCKDOPING (93K)
#CYCLECHIC (63K)
#CYCLINGKIT (58K)
#CYCLINGAPPAREL (36K)
#CYCLESTYLE (28K)
#CYCLEGEAR (19K)
#CYCLINGGEAR (13k)
#KITPORN (12K)
#CYCLINGCAPS (9K)
#CYCLECLOTHING (4K)
Download the hashtag swipe file!
Seasonal cycling hashtags
As cyclists, we get to enjoy the great outdoors the whole year round, and experience our environment in all its visual beauty. You really do see and experience so much more on a bike, and for season specific cycling photos, search these hashtags.
These hashtags are also used quite a bit by motorcyclists and horse riders! So they’re not exclusively cycling related.
#WINTERRIDING (27K)
#WINTERMILES (12K)
#AUTUMNRIDE (5K)
#SPRINGRIDING (14K)
#SUMMERCYCLING (4K) (though this post was written in March, so the number would be higher in the actual summer!)
Instagram cycling hashtags for Photography
There are lots of instagram hashtags for cycling photos. Of course, all the hashtags are for photos really, but this set of hashtags is explicitly around pictures and photos, so naturally they are some of the most popular cycling hashtags you can use on instagram.
#BIKEPORN (1.7 million, mostly motorcycles though)
#CYCLINGPHOTOS (679K)
#CYCLINGSHOTS (417K)
#CYCLINGPICS (171K)
#LIGHTBRO (98K)
#CYCLINGPHOTO (67K)
#CYCLINGPHOTOGRAPHY (18K)
#CYCLINGSELFIE (16K)
#CYCLESHOTS (9K)
#CYCLEPHOTOS (5K)
#CYCLEPHOTOGRAPHY (1K)
Download the hashtag swipe file!
Humour
I wasn’t quite sure what to put the following tags into, so I decided on a “humour” category. If you know any other good ones, please add them in the comments and I’ll add them to this list.
#FOREVERBUTTPHOTOS (31K)
#SHOWUSYOURKITS (1K)
#WEIRDBIKE (0.5K)
Cycle commuting hashtags on Instagram
If you’re looking for the top instagram hashtags for cycle commuting, then give these a go. Celebrate your cycle to work!
#BIKECOMMUTE (40K)
#CYCLETOWORK (12K)
#BIKECOMMUTER (11K)
#CYCLECOMMUTE (5K)
Instagram hashtags for Cycle Touring
These hashtags for cycle touring routinely get a lot of posts:
#BIKEPACKING (137K)
#CYCLETOURING (73K)
#WORLDBYBIKE (50K)
#CYCLETOUR (33K)
Instagram cycling hashtags for the Ladies
Like many of the cycle / bike hashtags, there are often overlaps between motorcycles and bicycles. As you might expect, some of the most popular instagram cycling accounts are run by attractive women, and it’s easy to see why.
#BIKEGIRL (153K)
#RIDELIKEAGIRL (120K)
#BIKEGIRLS (94k)
#GIRLSONBIKES (77K)
#VENUSBIKES (15K)
Grab my swipe file with all the hashtags in this article!
Keep this file on your phone to quickly and easily copy/paste all the most popular cycling hashtags to your instagram posts.
Get more likes and follows on instagram
Download my swipe file with all of the hashtags mentioned in this post.
Copy/Paste them into your instagram posts and get more likes and follows!
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Tips – how to get more followers on Instagram
Don’t use the generic hashtags, as they are so popular that your photo will disappear off the feed within a few minutes. Use slightly less popular, but more niche-specifc tags. You’ll be more likely to reach the right crowd.
If you want to include a range of tags, don’t sprinkle them throughout your narrative as it makes everything a little harder to read. Instead, post a clean description of the photo, then add all the tags afterward. If you enter about 5 blank lines and then your tags, they will be hidden in the feed, and with a little […] link to expand it. Better still, in my view, add the tags as the first comment to the post. How many tags is too many? It’s commonly accepted to see a block of 20 to 30 hashtags (30 is the max), and if you keep them to the first comment (rather than the main description), even better.
Look for accounts where the number they follow is similar to the number of followers they have. This indicates they generally follow people back. Some of the bigger accounts might have tens of thousands of followers, but they only follow less than a hundred accounts themselves. They’re never going to follow you back.
Reposting other people’s content is generally considered acceptable on instagram if you credit the original poster. Some would say it’s more polite to ask first. It’s better to screenshot the images you want to repost, rather than use those repost apps which add their own watermark/logo.
Tag big feature pages in your posts, and look out for feature page hashtags to use. For example, if your #venusbikes photo is picked up and reposted by the @venusbikes account, you’ll reach around 70 thousand people!
You can’t post links on instagram. The only place you can have a link is in your bio, so don’t forget to fill that in with your website address, or wherever you want to send them. Put www.scarletfire.co.uk in there if you like ;-)
This one is completely obvious – post good images. Instagram is a very visual medium so be creative.
Post regularly.
Engage with people. Like their posts. Comment on them. Try to post descriptions that encourage people to comment on your own posts.
Engage some more. Because that’s what really makes the difference.
Other related posts on ScarletFire:
How you can get your photos in your Strava feed
Jazz up your instagram photos with Prisma
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ScarletFire Cycling
ScarletFire Cycling.