D o you want to know how to display an Instagram hashtag feed on WordPress? 

Maybe you just started a blog and want to promote your content. Or maybe you’re looking for a new way to interact with loyal readers. 

Either way, an Instagram hashtag feed helps drive traffic to your blog while building your social presence. In this guide, we’ll show you what an Instagram hashtag feed is and how to display it on WordPress.

Get ready for more engagement, Instagram followers, and traffic! 

What’s an Instagram Hashtag Feed? 

An Instagram hashtag feed is when you choose a hashtag and then display a feed of photos using that hashtag. This makes it easy to organize photos by a topic or event.

For example, you could display a feed of photos with the hashtag #mountains, like below.

An example of an instagram hashtag feed. #mountains

Pretty cool, right? Now you might be wondering why you should add a hashtag feed to your blog… Are they that important?

Why Display an Instagram Hashtag Feed on WordPress?

An Instagram hashtag feed does more than show off your photos. It also increases website engagement, conversions, and Instagram followers. 

Some benefits of an Instagram hashtag feed include: 

Saved time  

Let’s face it—people love images, especially when they’re fun and engaging. OptinMonster even found that images can increase signups by 329%! 

Sure, there are many ways to find free images for your blog. But you can also get the job done with a hashtag feed. 

For example, let’s say you own a nature blog. Instead of looking through hundreds of nature photos online, you could embed a #wildlife hashtag feed to WordPress.

An example of an Instagram hashtag feed from Smash Balloon

Notice how these images relate to your nature blog? With a hashtag feed, your blog will always be filled with fun and interesting images, without the extra work.

Engaged Followers   

If you already own an Instagram, you’ve probably wondered how to engage followers with your account.  

Well what if we told you that a hashtag feed can increase activity with your followers?

Let’s take a look at the company, Life is Good.

The good vibe tribe is a hashtag feed example of engaging and getting more users to follow your blog.

Life is Good encourages their audience to post photos of happy moments using the hashtag #ThisIsOptimism. So when people visit their site, a feed of “Life is Good” photos are ready to view.

This is a fun and inclusive way to engage with your audience—they’ll feel involved and included in your business.

Social Proof 

In addition to written testimonials, you can also use a hashtag feed for social proof.

If you’re not sure what social proof is, think back to the last time you bought an item online. You probably looked at the product reviews before you bought it, right? 

Those product reviews told you that other people bought and enjoyed the product. And you will too. 

So how can you use a hashtag feed as social proof? Let’s take a look at Vivadogs. 

Vivadogs is an example of social proof. They show photos of their customer's dogs with their product

Vivadogs sells gift boxes for dogs. When a customer receives the box, they can post a photo on Instagram with the hashtag #vivadogs. 

Notice how each photo shows a happy dog and their gift box? This is social proof. When a new visitor sees these adorable photos, they’ll want their own pup to have a gift box too. 

All in all, an Instagram hashtag feed is a unique way to boost followers, conversions, and customer satisfaction. You can read more about growing your blog with Instagram in our ultimate guide to Instagram for bloggers.

So now you know why you should embed an Instagram hashtag feed to your site…But how do you do it? 

Display an Instagram Hashtag Feed With a Plugin

To embed an Instagram hashtag feed on a WordPress site, you’ll need a plugin. In this guide, we’re going to use Smash Balloon’s plugin, Instagram Feed Pro. 

smash balloon instagram feed pro

Instagram Feed Pro makes it easy to create and display an Instagram hashtag feed on your WordPress site.

And unlike other Instagram plugins, Google can crawl your feed content with Instagram Feed Pro. Every time your feed updates, Google will index the alt text and captions of those images.

This is why we recommend Instagram Feed Pro—you can easily embed a hashtag feed and automatically boost your blog SEO without creating more content.

Go ahead and purchase Instagram Feed Pro before getting started. Then you’ll need to:

  • Download, install and activate Instagram Feed Pro.

You can refer to our guide on how to install a plugin if needed. 

  • Have an Instagram business account

To display a hashtag feed on WordPress, you need a business account.

But don’t worry – if you already own a personal Instagram account, you can easily switch to a business account with just a few clicks.

How to Embed an Instagram Hashtag Feed on WordPress

Now that you’ve activated Instagram Feed Pro, we can embed your hashtag feed to WordPress.

1. Connect Your Instagram Account to WordPress

The first thing you need to do is connect your Instagram account to your WordPress site. On your WordPress dashboard, click on Instagram Feed » Settings. From here, hit Connect an Instagram Account. 

To connect your instagram account with instagram feed pro, click on instagram feed settings and then Connect an Instagram account

As we mentioned above, you need a business account to display a hashtag feed, so after you click Business, hit Connect.

Choose Business to display an Instagram hashtag feed on WordPress

From here, WordPress will send you to your Facebook account login. Your Facebook and Instagram are connected, so once you log into Facebook, Instagram can link to WordPress.

If you’d like, you can also connect your account manually. To do this, click on Manually Connect an Account. 

Manually Connect an Account is another way to connect your Instagram to Instagram Feed Pro

You can retrieve your Instagram access token on Smash Balloon. Once you have an access token, enter it under Manually Connect an Account

2. Add Hashtags to Your Instagram Feed  

Now that your Instagram account is connected, you can set up hashtags. These hashtags will appear on your hashtag feed.

Next to Feed Type, click Public Hashtag

Public hashtag allows you to set up and display an instagram hashtag feed

Feel free to add as many hashtags as you’d like to your feed. Just make sure to separate each hashtag with a comma. 

Don’t forget to hit Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

3. Customize Instagram Hashtag Settings 

One of the best parts of Instagram Feed Pro is its customization settings. You can personalize your hashtag feed in many ways.

At the top of the Instagram Feed page, you’ll notice a toolbar. Click Customize to personalize your feed.  

General customizations can change the size and color of the instagram hashtag feed

We’ll start with the basics. Here, you can change the size and background color of your feed. 

As you scroll down, you’ll see the layout settings. 

There are 4 types of layouts: 
Grid, Carousel, Masonry, and Highlight

Here’s what each layout type means: 

Grid: A uniform grid of square images. 

A grid layout is a uniform grid of images.

Carousel: Users can swipe through your images and videos with a carousel feed. 

A carousel feed lets users swipe through your images and videos

Masonry: Each image in your feed is uploaded in their original size. 

Masonry uploads photos in their original size

Highlight: With this option, you can highlight certain images and videos. The highlighted images are enlarged to grab attention. 

Once you’re finished customizing your feed, click on Save Changes

4. Style Instagram Hashtag Posts (Optional)

Along with your hashtag feed, you can also customize how your Instagram images and videos appear on your WordPress site.

To get started, click on Posts. 

Click on Posts to style each photo or video in the hashtag feed. You can find Posts under Customize

As you scroll down, you’ll notice several features to customize.

For example, you can:

  • Display your photos in random order, by date, or by number of likes
  • Choose whether or not to display captions
  • Customize your like and comment icons

…and more!

Once you’re done, click Save Changes at the bottom.

5. Moderate Your Instagram Hashtag Feed 

As Instagram hashtag feeds are public, there will be times when you see a photo you don’t like on your feed.

Luckily, you can filter hashtags and images with Instagram Feed Pro’s moderation feature. To get started, click on Moderation

Moderation helps you filter what can and cannot show up on your feed. Click on Moderation next to Posts.

Under Post Filtering, you can remove or show certain words and hashtags on your feed. 

If you’d like to remove certain images, scroll down to Moderation.

Visual moderation allows you to manually remove each post.

There are 2 ways to remove images. The Manual option lets you enter in each photo ID you’d like to remove. 

You can also remove images with the Visual option. When you choose this option, a “moderate” button will appear on all of your feeds. This button makes it easy to hide images and create white lists, so we suggest this option. 

Save Changes, and you’re ready to embed your hashtag feed! 

6. Display Your Instagram Hashtag Feed on WordPress

There are 3 ways to display your hashtag feed on your site. You can look through each method and choose the best option for your blog. 

  • Instagram Feed WordPress Block: If you use the WordPress block editor then this option is best for you.
  • Instagram Feed Shortcode: This is the best option for the classic WordPress editor. 
  • Instagram Feed WordPress Widget: This is a great way to embed your feed to your footer, header, or sidebar. Make sure you have an Instagram Feed widget for this option.

Let’s take a look at how to do each of these.

Instagram Feed WordPress Block 

To get started, create a new post or page in WordPress. In this example, we’ll create a new page. Click on Pages » Add New. 

Click Pages then All Pages to embed an instagram hashtag feed with the new WordPress block editor

On the page, add a content block by clicking on the (+) icon. Type in Instagram Feed and click on the block. 

You can add an Instagram feed widget to the page using the block editor. This will embed the hashtag feed.

Your Instagram feed should appear on the page. Choose Publish to publish your new page, or Update if you’re adding it to an existing page.

An example of what an instagram hashtag feed looks like

Instagram Feed Shortcode 

To use a short code, head to Instagram Feed » Settings and click on Display Your Feed. Then, copy and paste the shortcode [instagram-feed] at the top. 

Go to Display Your Feed and then copy the shortcode to embed a hashtag feed with a shortcode.

Head to your WordPress page and paste the shortcode. Then, hit Publish. 

Copy the instagram feed shortcode to a WordPress page or post

All done! 

Instagram Feed WordPress Widget 

Like we mentioned above, this option lets you add your feed to any widget area on your site. For most themes, this includes your footer, header, and sidebar.

In this example, we’ll show you how to add a carousel hashtag feed to the footer of your site. 

Click on Appearance » Widgets. Find the Instagram Feed shortcode and copy it into your footer. 

Click on Widget under Appearance to embed an Instagram hashtag feed with a widget

Hit Saved and head over to your page. Your carousel hashtag feed will appear in the footer of WordPress.

What a carousel instagram hashtag feed looks like in the footer

And that’s it, you’ve officially added an Instagram hashtag feed to your WordPress site!

Your audience will love this new feature on your blog… Prepare for more engagement, signups, and Instagram followers! 

Do you want to optimize Facebook on WordPress too? Feel free to check out our top recommended Facebook plugins (Smash Balloon has a Facebook plugin too) and one reason to keep your Facebook page

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our email newsletter!

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  1. Rahul Arora on November 20, 2020

    Wow!!! It was a great blog with so much information about the hashtags feed on WordPress

  2. Shalini Sridhar on July 31, 2021

    Hello this article was very useful. I was looking for something like this.
    A query, if i have a couple of hashtags and i want to display one on each – for example #hashtag1 on Page 1 and #hashtag2 on Page2 – could I create two separate short codes and place on the respective pages?

    1. Hey Shalini, yes, displaying 2 different hashtag feeds is possible with Smash Balloon. You can do it by specifying the hashtags in the shortcode. For example, if you had it set up to display one hashtag already, it would look something like this:
      [instagram-feed type=hashtag hashtag=”#hashtag1″]
      [instagram-feed type=hashtag hashtag=”#hashtag2″]

      They can also be combined if wanted;
      [instagram-feed type=hashtag hashtag=”#hashtag1,#hashtag2″]

      You can also find all shortcode options under the ‘Display’ tab in the plugin dashboard. If you need help, you can always reach out to Smash Balloon via their support form: https://smashballoon.com/instagram-feed/support/. Hope this helps! 🙂

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