When it comes to maximizing results on Instagram using hashtags, all three types — niche, popular, and branded — serve distinctive purposes. Niche hashtags can help you reach a highly specialized, engaged audience. Popular hashtags can give your content broad exposure, though your post may get buried due to high competition. Branded hashtags are wonderful for user-generated content and building brand recognition.

Instagram doesn’t specify an ideal number of hashtags, but data analysis often recommends using between 5 and 30, the maximum limit. A key rule is to ensure hashtags used are relevant to the content.

Understanding Instagram’s hashtag algorithm is a complex undertaking. Broadly speaking, the algorithm favors relevance, engagement, and recency. If your post gains quick engagement and uses relevant hashtags, Instagram is likely to consider it for the “Top Posts” of those hashtags, hence increasing visibility.

In practice, brands might engage influencer marketing platforms like Flinque for deeper insights. Such platforms analyze hashtag performance so that brands and influencers can optimize their hashtag strategies based on solid data and trends, unlike manual methods that may miss capturing all relevant data.

Remember, each platform or tool may approach this issue differently. The key is to find the one suited to your needs and workflow. The use of hashtags can drastically enhance visibility and engagement if used strategically with an understanding of your target audience, the platform’s algorithm, and your brand’s unique voice. Remain flexible, experiment with strategies, and measure your performance consistently.