Adding Hashtags when we post a photo or a video on Instagram is something that we all do on daily basis. In fact, putting the relevant and correct Hashtags for a particular Instagram post is one of the best ways to get more exposure for our picture, and eventually more likes and even more followers.

Currently in Instagram we can only put a maximum of 30 Hashtags in one post, and we should use this limit to the max when ever possible.

But how do we write this list of hashtags without typing each of them manually each time we post to Instagram?

Savvy Instagramers would come up with several practical idea such as pre-writing the list on Notes and just copy and paste when it’s needed. Or they might peruse the help of some Instagram hashtag apps, like for example TagsForLike, which not only enables you to copy and paste a custom list of Hashtags but also helps you to find ‘which’ Hashtags are appropriate to use for a particular topic.

All these tricks are pretty cool, but they still rely on copy-paste mechanism which often feel tedious, though it still beats writing all those hashtags manually.

Well .. you can now say goodbye to copy and paste, because I’ve just found the quickest way of doing this!

The trick involves in employing a built-in feature that the iOS has; it’s called the Keyboard Shortcut, or many of you might recognise it as Text Expander.

Expand It!

How does it work?

You have to create a shortcut word with at least one character in length. And then you will need to setup the string of words which will be represented by the the shortcut.

To do this, go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts.

On the Shortcuts page you will see a list of shortcuts you have been created. You can see some that I’ve created for my Hashtags in this screenshot.

To add a new keyboard shortcut tap on the ‘plus’ icon at the top right-hand corner of the page. Then on the next page, type the replacement words on the Phrase text box, and the shortcut word on the other text box. Tap on the Save button when you finish entering the words.

Adding keyboard shortcut

Type in the phase and shortcut

Adding keyboard shortcut

New shortcut is added

 

Now how do we use the shortcut? Easy! Just type the shortcut word where ever you need it, followed by  a ‘space’. The shortcut will then be expanded to the string of words it representing. Done!

Expand Keyboard Shortcut

Type in the shortcut

Expand Keyboard Shortcut

Shortcut replaced by the phrase setup

You can imagine that this trick does not only work for writing a list of hashtags but really you can use it for practically anything!  It works the best with phrases that you often use it time and time again, e.g. your full name, address, email, your website URL, etc.

If you’ve discovered any other cool tricks like this, please don’t hesitate to let me know in the comment, I will definitely post it in this blog.