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How to create your own hashtag, and check nobody already owns it

October 1, 2026

How do you create your own hashtag? You write # followed by a word or a few words run together, with no spaces, and post it. There is nothing to register and nobody to ask. The part that takes thought is choosing a tag that is short, readable, spelled one way only, and not already busy with somebody else’s posts. This guide walks through making your own hashtag for a business, an event or a campaign, from the first list of ideas to checking who is using it a month later.

What “your own hashtag” actually means

Nobody owns a hashtag. Any public account can post under any tag, so “your own” means a tag that is yours in practice: nobody else posts under it much, it names something only you do, and the people who use it are your customers, guests or community.

That gives three common kinds:

A brand tag is meant to last for years. A campaign tag lasts weeks. An event tag lasts a day and then becomes the album people scroll back through. The steps below are the same for all three, but how hard you check for clashes differs, and that is covered in the step on checking the tag page.

How to create your own hashtag, step by step

Here is the whole process on one page. Each step gets its own section below.

1. Decide what the tag is for and who will type it.
2. Write a long list of candidate tags, twenty or more.
3. Cut the list with the spelling and readability rules.
4. Check each survivor on Instagram to see whether the tag page is empty, quiet, or already taken.
5. Pick one, write it the same way everywhere, and put it where people will see it.
6. Watch who uses it and whether the posts under it are really about you.

The first three steps happen on paper. The last three happen on Instagram.

Step 1: decide what the tag is for

A tag with no job gets used once and forgotten. Before you brainstorm, write one sentence that says what should happen when somebody uses it. For example:

• “Customers post photos of our cakes at their parties, and we repost the best ones.”
• “Entrants to the spring contest post their bake, and we can find every entry in one place.”
• “Wedding guests share their photos so we have one album at the end of the night.”

That sentence decides almost everything else. A contest tag has to be unique, because you will judge entries from it and a stranger’s post under the same tag causes an awkward conversation. A brand tag for reposting can tolerate a little noise. A wedding tag needs to be easy to type on a phone after two glasses of wine.

Also write down who will type it. Your staff will type anything you tell them to. Your customers will type what they can remember after seeing it once on a sign or a receipt.

Step 2: write a long list of candidates

Do not fall for the first idea. Write twenty or more, fast, using a few reliable patterns:

• Name plus place: #RiverstoneBristol
• Name plus the thing you make: #RiverstoneBakes, #RiverstoneSourdough
• A short phrase your customers already say: #FridayLoaf
• Name plus the event or year: #RiverstoneBakeOff2026
• A play on words, if one comes naturally: couple names blended, a pun on the product

For an event tag, surnames, first names, the date and the place are the raw material. For a campaign, the verb you want people to do (“bake”, “share”, “show”) is often the strongest word.

Step 3: cut the list with the spelling rules

Instagram’s rules for what counts as a hashtag are short. As of October 2026 its help centre says:

Numbers are allowed in hashtags. However, spaces and special characters, like $ or %, won’t work.

So #Bake&Share becomes #Bake, and everything after the ampersand is plain text. On top of that rule, cross out any candidate that fails one of these checks:

Capitalise each word when you write it (#RiverstoneBakeOff rather than #riverstonebakeoff). Hashtags are not case sensitive, so both spellings land on the same page, but the capitals make it readable and help screen readers say it properly. That is a courtesy, and it costs nothing.

Read the survivors aloud. If you would feel silly saying one to a customer, cross it out.

Step 4: check the tag on Instagram before you use it

This is the step most guides mention in a line and most people skip, and it is where a tag succeeds or fails. For each tag left on your list:

1. Open Instagram and tap the search icon.
2. Type the tag, including the #.
3. Open its tag page and scroll the recent posts.

You are looking for one of three answers:

Read what the posts are about as well as how many there are. A tag that seems free can belong to another business in another country, a sports team, or a meme you have not heard of. Open a few posts and read the captions. Try the obvious misspellings too, since a customer who types the wrong one should not land in the middle of someone else’s conversation.

Some tag pages are restricted, and Instagram shows fewer or no recent posts for them. If a tag you like shows almost nothing even though you know people use it, treat it as a warning sign and choose another. A tag you cannot see the posts of is also a tag you cannot track.

This check takes a minute per tag. With ten candidates that is ten tag pages, each with posts to open and read, which is why it is worth doing on a short list rather than on all twenty.

Step 5: pick one and use it the same way everywhere

Choose the tag that passed step 4 and that you would still be happy with in a year. Then:

• Write it one way, everywhere. Same capitals, same spelling, on the sign, the menu, the receipt, the website and your bio.
• Put it where people are when they would post. A card on the table, a line on the packaging, a slide at the event. People do not look up a tag later.
• Use it yourself first. A tag page with a dozen of your own good posts shows others what belongs there.
• Tell people what happens when they use it. “Tag #RiverstoneBakes and we share our favourites every Friday” gives a reason to type it.

Remember that the tag takes one of your five slots. Instagram’s help centre, as of October 2026, is clear on the limit:

You can use up to 5 tags on a post. If you include more than 5 tags on a single photo/video, your comment won’t post.

So your own tag plus four descriptive ones is a sensible set. For choosing those four, see best hashtags for Instagram, and for where to put them on the post, how to put hashtags on Instagram.

One more rule from the same page catches people out: posts from private accounts do not appear on the public tag page. If a customer tells you they used your tag and you cannot find their post, that is the likely reason.

Step 6: watch who uses it

A tag you created is only useful if you look at it. Once a week, or after each campaign, open the tag page and note:

• how many new posts appeared since you last looked;
• who posted them, and whether they are customers, staff or strangers;
• whether any post is off-topic, which is the early sign that someone else has started using your tag;
• which posts are worth a thank-you, a repost (with permission), or a reply.

Keep those notes somewhere dated. A tag page shows you the posts as they are today. It does not tell you how this month compares with last month, and it does not keep a list you can sort. A spreadsheet with the date, the account, the link and a line about the post is enough for a small business.

For more on searching tag pages by hand, see how to search hashtags on Instagram.

A faster way to check and track a tag

Steps 4 and 6 are the ones that grow. Checking ten candidate tags, their misspellings and a couple of rivals’ tags is a lot of tag pages, and tracking a live tag every week is a job that never finishes.

This is the kind of research Hashtag Ninja is built for. You describe what you want to know in a sentence, such as “is anyone already posting under #RiverstoneBakeOff or its misspellings, and what about?”, and the free planner turns it into a research plan: the tags to look at, how many posts to check under each, over what window, and what to look for. It lists its own assumptions, so you can correct a wrong guess. It is free and needs no signup.

To be clear about what it does today: turning that plan into the collected posts, the numbers and a CSV is open, on the 500 free rows a signed-in account gets every 30 days, as the pricing page explains. The plan on its own is still a useful checklist for the tag-page checks above.

The tool pages cover the related jobs:

• Instagram brand mention tracking for watching your own branded tag over time
• Find UGC creators by hashtag for finding the people posting under a campaign tag
• Instagram competitor hashtag analysis for seeing which tags a rival uses

When the manual way is enough

Plenty of people should never need a tool for this. The manual steps above are enough when:

• It is a one-off event tag. A wedding or a birthday needs one check before the day and one look afterwards.
• You have one brand tag and a few posts a week under it. Scrolling the tag page on Monday morning takes minutes.
• You are testing three or four candidates, not twenty.

Planning the research first earns its place when you are choosing among many candidates, when you run tags for several clients or locations, or when somebody will later ask how you decided the tag was free.

Quick checklist

Before you print your hashtag on anything:

• The tag has a job, written in one sentence.
• It has no spaces or symbols, and it reads clearly with capitals.
• There is only one obvious way to spell it.
• Its Instagram tag page is empty or quiet, and so are its likely misspellings.
• You have posted under it yourself.
• You have a date in the calendar to look at who is using it.

Do those six things and the hashtag is yours in the only sense that counts: the people posting under it are yours.

Try Hashtag Ninja free →