How to Tag Someone on Instagram

You may think that Instagram is all about photos and videos, but without the hashtags, nothing would work. Tags of every shape and form, for that matter, are essential on Instagram and knowing how to tag properly could mean a whole lot for both you and the person you’re tagging.

The Hashtag

Hashtags are exactly what keeps the whole social media platform going. You may not do it but people actually use the search bar on Instagram for more than merely finding an account to follow. Some people like to explore this content-abundant social media platform through the hashtags.

But how does this answer the question of how to tag someone? Well, although hashtagging doesn’t really mean tagging an account, it could mean a whole lot to influencers and people who care about their outreach and following. This is especially true if they use a unique hashtag; if you use it when tagging your posts too, you’re likely to spread their reach and help them get some new followers.

Hashtagging can be done in Instagram posts, but also in Stories, although the hashtags in Stories are often turned down for hashtag aggregation, regardless of whether your profile is public or not. That being said, if you want to hashtag somebody, it’s all worth a try, because you may land them some extra exposure.

Mentioning

Mentioning is often confused for tagging. The main difference here is that when you mention someone, you do that in the post description. That means that their name won’t appear in the actual photo when your followers tap on it. However, mentioning someone will notify them and will give you an option to add the post to your Story, which is a fantastic resharing tool.

This is also a great thing for the “mentioned” party if the profile that mentioned them is private. If you have access to the profile of someone who mentioned you, you can reshare it as a Story. Tagging someone in a post doesn’t make it reshareable, but it does have other benefits.

Tagging

When it comes to the good old tagging, it essentially does what it did from the early days of Myspace: you get a name tag under your face or wherever you were tagged on the photo. This enables your followers to go to the tagged person’s profile directly from your post which is useful, especially if there are more people in the post.

However, what tagging also does is it adds the photo that you were tagged in to the Photos of You section on your profile. People viewing your profile will often visit this part and having great content in your tagged posts is almost as important as having fantastic content in your posts section. When it comes to posts, both tagging and mentioning are very useful for the tagged person and both actions take an only few seconds.

Stories

With the introduction of Stories, however, a new form of tagging was introduced. First, you can’t really tag someone in the story. As a matter of fact, it is called “mentioning” and, for all intents and purposes, it is a mix of a mention and a tag. When mentioning somebody in your story, you add the “@” sign before their username, as you would in the post description. However, the mention is usually placed like a tag, near the person in the photo. Tap the mention and you’ll see the user’s name.

Where the post tags don’t enable you to reshare the post that you’re tagged in, the Story mentions do allow you to reshare a Story that you’re mentioned in to your profile. This is very useful for the same reasons resharing posts as Stories is.

How to Do It

The actual technicalities behind hashtags have been made simple. To mention a hashtag, just add the “#” symbol before it. For instance, if you wanted to hashtag the actor James Franco, you’d simply put #jamesfranco. You’ll likely be prompted with multiple hashtag choices, so pick the one with the largest number of followers.

To mention someone in a post, simply add the “@” symbol in front of their name. As soon as you start typing the username, you’ll be prompted with a list of profiles. Choose the person in question and that is it. To mention someone in a Story, either go into the typing mode and do the same thing, or go to the Stickers option and choose the “@mention” sticker.

To tag someone in a post, select a photo and once you get to the caption screen, tap Tag People, tap anywhere on the photo, and type the name of the person that you want to tag.

That’s All, Folks!

When it comes to tagging on Instagram, it is very important to know what sort of a tag (hashtag, mention, Story mention) to use and when along with knowing how to actually do it. It is always recommended to perform all the tag types that you can, but sometimes, no hashtag and mention works better than having both, aesthetically. And keep in mind, aesthetics matter a lot on Instagram.

How do you tag people? Do you ever think about it? Share your thoughts below.