How Social Media Usage Of Popular DIY Hashtags Has Changed

One prominent–and useful–application of social video into today’s world is in the do-it-yourself arena. With just a quick search on YouTube or Instagram, one can uncover multitudes of videos explaining how to do everything from changing the oil in your car to cutting your own hair. And while many videos are informative, some are just plain fun to watch. Yeah, you may never actually attempt to make those lotus dumplings, but there’s something soothing about seeing them get made.

Influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ, which was recently recognized as a leader in the latest Forrester New Wave: Influencer Marketing Solutions report, looked at 12 of the most popular DIY hashtags used by Instagram creators with 50,000 or more followers to uncover trends: #diy, #handmade, #doityourself, #homedecor, #craft, #woodworking, #crafts, #decor, #homemade, #diycrafts, #diyhomedecor, and #maker.  

While you may assume that engagement around DIY content skyrocketed as people were quarantined at home during the coronavirus pandemic, that isn’t the case for all of the top hashtags.

The hashtags with consistent year-over-year-growth

Four hashtags had year-over-year increases across the board from January through May 20 compared to the same date range in 2019: #doityourself, #crafts, #diycrafts, and #diyhomedecor. 

Some specifics: #doityourself and #crafts saw their biggest year-over-year increases in May–45.10% and 19.07%, respectively–while both #diycrafts and #diyhomedecor saw their biggest increases in January (160.24% and 46.54%, respectively). 

In general, #diycrafts has been the breakout hashtag for 2020, with consistently large year-over-year increases each month so far this year, the biggest being the aforementioned 160.24% in January. Top accounts by engagement with this hashtag include

Looking at recent top #diycrafts videos by engagement, three of them come from @diyglaze:

Another top video came from @selectdiyss: 

The hashtags that grew during #StayAtHome

Both the #homemade and #diy hashtags had year-over-year decreases in January and February this year, but both saw increases in March (when stay-at-home orders began to be issued due to the coronavirus pandemic) through May. 

For the #diy hashtag, starting in March it trended up with a 1.23% year-over-year increase in use. Then, in April, it saw a 15.12% year-over-year increase, and in May, a 23.50% year-over-year increase (as measured May 1-20). The top creators by engagements for #diy included @5.min.crafts, @diyselected, @fasttipsvideos, @diycraftsvideos and @diyglaze. 

Recent top #diy videos by engagements include: 

A clever tutorial on how to accurately draw a face: 

A food-themed video: 

Resin crafts: 

For #homemade, the biggest increase was in April (a 73.55% increase compared to April 2019), with a 13.25% increase year-over-year in March and a 60.67% year-over-year increase in May. The top creators by engagements for #homemade include @arts.hub, @akis_petretzikis, @globalcreatived, @wiltoncakes, and @fixer_upper_before_and_after. 

Two of the top posts by engagement: 

Which hashtags aren’t as popular this year

Three hashtags actually saw year-over-year decreases in engagement from January to May: #maker, #decor, and #woodworking. Two others, #handmade and #homedecor, had increases in January (15.67% and 17.70%, respectively) and February (3.37% and 8.43%), but declines from March to May.