Are Hashtags Over? The 2025 Social Media Reality Check

Use hashtags, or rather not use them? 

The concept of employing hashtags to increase the number of your followers and other social media analytics often results in one of two extreme opinions. You’re either a fan of incorporating hashtags into all your posts, or you strongly dislike them, steering clear at all costs. Still, it’s undeniable that hashtags typically assist in broadening the exposure of your posts.

If your goal is to maximize the visibility of your content (and isn’t that essentially the essence of a social media platform?), then adopting a hashtag strategy becomes important.

Hashtags serve as a potent discovery mechanism known for sharing photos and videos (and honestly, on all your other preferred social platforms as well). It’s a well-acknowledged fact that hashtags can significantly boost and extend the reach of your content creation strategy on social media. Using the hashtag or # symbol before a word or phrase, you’re grouping your content with other related material on social media platforms.

In this article, you can explore how to use hashtags in your social media strategy and what tools can help you with managing them. 

What’s A Hashtag? 

It’s probably obvious, but what is the actual definition of a hashtag?

A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the hash symbol (#), used on social media platforms to identify and categorize content around specific topics, themes, or conversations. It turns any word or group of words that directly follow it into a searchable link. This allows users to organize content and track discussion topics based on those keywords.

So, when a user clicks on a hashtag, they are brought to a page that aggregates all the content associated with that hashtag. Hashtags are important in increasing the discoverability of posts and are widely used on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

So, how did it first appear? 

The hashtag has been around since the days of typewriters, but gained a new lease of life when Chris Messina proposed its use on Twitter in 2007. He suggested using the pound sign (#) to group tweets around common themes. Initially met with skepticism by Twitter, the hashtag quickly proved its worth. Its first significant use was during the San Diego County fire in 2007, where it helped twitter users track updates about the fire. Since then, hashtags have become a universal symbol on the internet.

What Hashtags Should I Use on Social Media?

On social media, a hashtag is more than just a metadata tag. It’s a way for users to connect with others and engage in public conversations. Incorporating hashtags means that posts become part of a larger, often global, dialogue on a particular topic. They can signify the theme or subject of a post, trending topics, or connect it to ongoing social movements. Hashtags are also used for humor, irony, or emphasis, adding a layer of context to social media content. They function as a digital gateway, linking users to social walls of shared interests and collective experiences. This integration allows posts to be part of broader social walls, facilitating connections with a wider audience and immersing content in a network of related discussions and communities.

How to Find Trending Hashtags?

Finding effective hashtag suggestions may seem like a hard manual task and the idea of incorporating up to 30 hashtags in each post might seem overwhelming at first. Especially when you realize that repeating the same set of hashtags for every post isn’t effective. For those who frequently update their Instagram, it’s good to develop a broad collection of hashtags for varied use. You must carefully choose the most fitting group of hashtags for each of your posts.

Here are some methods to identify appropriate hashtags:

Use Instagram’s search feature. Enter a keyword related to your post and click on the Tags tab. Instagram will display a variety of hashtag suggestions. Look for relevant tags that are used enough to be effective but not so popular that your posts get lost quickly.

Adopt hashtags used by influencers in your field.

Examine the posts of your competitors and consider using the non-branded hashtags they employ. However, make sure these hashtags aren’t part of their specific campaigns before using them.

Review posts that have been successful with hashtags you’ve previously used on social media platforms. What additional hashtags do these posts include? Determine if any of these could be beneficial for your brand.

Start With Influencers

Influencers are trendsetters in hashtag usage. Analyzing their posts can help you identify which hashtags are currently engaging audiences in your area of interest. Influencers often have a pulse on the latest trends. Pay attention to the frequency and context in which they use specific hashtags. This certainly allows you to find effective hashtags but also check the dynamics of audience engagement and content relevance in your niche. The goal is not to copy but to be inspired and informed. 

Holger Sindbaek, serial entrepreneur and the founder of Online Solitaire, says, “We used niche influencers to identify appropriate hashtags for our business promotion. By collaborating with influencers with a dedicated following within the gaming community, we could observe and analyze the hashtags they used to engage their audience. This approach helped us discover relevant hashtags that resonated with our target audience. By partnering with the right influencers, we ensured our content reached the right people, significantly boosting our engagement and visibility. Leveraging influencers’ established trust with their followers allowed us to connect authentically with a broader, yet targeted, user base, enhancing our overall marketing efforts.”

Tools To Track The Best Hashtags

Using a hashtag tracking tool helps you achieve a goal set in social media strategy. Such tools allow you to monitor the performance of specific hashtags, check what is the audience engagement, and identify trending topics relevant to your brand. Analyze it carefully so that you can refine your content strategy to better align with audience interests and increase your social media presence.

Talkwalker: 

Offers comprehensive hashtag analytics, allowing users to track hashtag performance across multiple platforms. It provides insights into the most influential channels mentioning a hashtag, helping you understand which hashtags are resonating with your target audience. Talkwalker also offers a free social search feature, enabling users to measure the impact of hashtags in terms of engagement, sentiment, and potential reach.

Hashtagify:

Hashtagify helps you find related hashtags and top influencers for each hashtag. Provides a hashtag counter for Twitter, showing a hashtag’s popularity, recent trends, and usage patterns. The tool also displays the times of day your hashtag is most used, offering insights into performance over time.

Brand24: 

Brand24 is an effective tool for real-time monitoring of hashtags across various platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, Quora, TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube. Beyond just monitoring, Brand24 allows for in-depth analysis of hashtag performance. Key metrics provided include the volume of mentions, social media reach, engagement volume, and sentiment analysis around a hashtag. The tool also identifies the most active and influential mentions, enabling you to pinpoint influential social media users or websites discussing your hashtag or brand. 

RiteTag: 

RiteTag evaluates the appropriateness of the hashtags you’re using in your tweets and provides a list of currently trending hashtags. The tool also offers instant feedback and integrates with social media tools like Buffer and Hootsuite, making it a versatile choice for real-time hashtag analysis.

Taggbox: 

Taggbox is a user-friendly tool for businesses to aggregate, curate, and display User-Generated Content (UGC) from various social media platforms. It offers powerful analytics tools, including Twitter hashtag analytics, to help businesses track and measure the impact of their UGC campaigns. Its customization options allow businesses to match their branding and marketing goals.

Socialert: 

Socialert is an easy-to-use tool for quick overviews of hashtag performance. It provides automatic reports for hashtags, keywords, and @mentions, making it useful for event tracking, brand monitoring, and competitor analysis. Offers a range of features, including sentiment analysis and influencer ranking, to enhance your social media strategy.

Same Hashtags Across Different Platforms?

Hashtags function differently across various social media platforms, adapting to the unique nature and audience of each. On Twitter, they are used for trending topics and real-time conversations, making them crucial for news and live events. Instagram hashtags, on the other hand, are more about community building and content discovery, often used to reach a wider audience and connect with specific interest groups. Facebook hashtags are less prominent but can still be used to categorize content and facilitate search. On platforms like TikTok, hashtags are pivotal in challenges and viral trends, driving user participation and content visibility. It’s good to keep in mind the platform-specific nuances to effectively leverage hashtags on any social networking site.

Hashtags and LinkedIn: A Unique Relationship

On LinkedIn, hashtags have a distinct role,as they are related to professional content and industry-specific discussions. Unlike Instagram or Twitter, where hashtags can be more casual or trend-based, LinkedIn hashtags are used to categorize professional content.

Jacek Zmudzinski, Team Lead at MakoLab says – “Using hashtags on LinkedIn is a simple yet effective way to categorize your content and make it more discoverable to a wider audience, including those outside your immediate network. When you add a hashtag to your LinkedIn post or article, it becomes part of a larger conversation on that topic. This means that when someone clicks on or searches for that hashtag, they can find your post among others tagged with the same phrase.” 

To add a hashtag, you can simply type the ‘#’ symbol followed by your keyword in the body of your post or at the end. LinkedIn also allows you to follow hashtags, so you can easily keep up with topics or trends that interest you. So, it’s advisable to incorporate hashtags to increase the visibility of your content on LinkedIn, reaching potential connections, growing your professional network and engaging with a broader audience.

Instagram Hashtag Strategy

An effective Instagram hashtag strategy involves using a mix of popular and niche hashtags to reach a broad yet targeted audience and improve your Instagram presence. Certain hashtags on Instagram have high post volumes and can boost your post’s discoverability, while niche hashtags connect you with a more specific audience interested in your content. Instagram’s algorithm uses hashtags to categorize content, making it easier for users to find posts that match their interests. Using hashtags strategically can help your content appear on the Instagram Explore page, further increasing its reach. Research and select hashtags that are relevant to your brand and audience, and regularly analyze your hashtag performance to refine your strategy.

But how many hashtags should you use on Instagram?

Although you can include as many as 30 hashtags on Instagram, using a large number isn’t always the best. The Instagram Creators account specifically advises limiting hashtags to between three and five. However, it’s noteworthy that many of the top creators on Instagram Reels frequently exceed this five hashtag guideline.

Should I use hashtags in the comments section?

Placing hashtags in either your post’s caption or in the comments section is effective, leaving the decision up to you. Still, it’s important to think about timing. If you choose to add hashtags in the comments section manually, it’s best to do so immediately after your post goes live.

The Psychology Behind Hashtag Popularity

The popularity of hashtags is deeply rooted in their ability to create a sense of community and belonging among users. They tap into the human desire to be part of something larger, connecting individuals across the globe over shared interests or causes. Hashtags also provide a sense of order and categorization in the chaotic world of social media, making information more accessible and digestible. The thrill of contributing to trending topics or viral challenges further fuels their popularity, as users feel a sense of participation in global conversations. Moreover, the simplicity and ease of using hashtags allow for spontaneous and organic content creation and sharing. The psychological appeal of hashtags lies in their power to connect, organize, and engage users in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Hashtags and SEO: An Inseparable Pair

Are hashtags used only by Of course not!

Hashtags and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) have become closely linked in digital marketing. Adding hashtags that are relevant make content more discoverable also in search engine results. Hashtags act like keywords, helping to categorize content and make it more accessible to those searching for specific topics. This is particularly true for platforms like Twitter and Instagram, where hashtags are heavily used to filter and find content. For businesses and content creators, strategically chosen hashtags can boost the visibility of posts, leading to increased engagement and reach. Hashtags are a simple yet powerful tool that can complement and improve your SEO efforts, making your content more visible and searchable online.

Hashtags and Common Mistakes

While hashtags can be incredibly beneficial, common mistakes can hinder their effectiveness. One of the most frequent errors is overusing hashtags, which can make posts look spammy and deter engagement. Another mistake is using irrelevant or overly generic hashtags that don’t align with the content, leading to poor targeting and reduced relevance. Some users also neglect to research their hashtags, missing out on trends or using banned or over-saturated tags. Failing to tailor hashtags for different social media platforms can result in missed opportunities, as each platform has its unique hashtag culture and usage. Avoiding these common pitfalls is crucial for maximizing the impact of your hashtag strategy.

Measuring Hashtag Effectiveness

I believe that assessing the satisfaction of your customers with your website likely ranks high on your list of customer satisfaction priorities. Perhaps you accomplish this through website feedback tools. But measuring the effectiveness of hashtags with the help of tools is equally important.

Tools like hashtag analytics can provide insights into the reach, engagement, and overall performance of your hashtags. Tracking metrics such as the number of likes, shares, comments, and the overall visibility of posts using specific hashtags can help determine their success. AMonitoring changes in follower count and engagement rates after implementing hashtag campaigns can offer valuable feedback, as well. If you analyze these metrics, you can refine your hashtag strategy, and focus on what works best for your current and new audiences. Regularly measuring and adjusting ensures that your use of hashtags remains effective.

Final Words: Are Hashtags Still Relevant in 2024?

In 2024, the question arises: are hashtags still relevant?

In 2024, the relevance of hashtags in social media remains a significant topic. Despite being around for nearly 17 years, hashtags continue to be an integral part of social media strategy. They play a role in reaching potential customers, as appropriate hashtags can lead your target audience directly to your brand. Your company can grow, as it also opens up avenues for new business opportunities.

Hashtags are particularly effective in enhancing organic reach on social media platforms. They work in tandem with social media algorithms, which prioritize content based on various factors including hashtag use, engagement, and content type. Custom hashtags contribute to a more robust marketing strategy by generating user-generated content and offering insights into customer behavior through social listening. The use of hashtags, therefore, remains a crucial element in social media marketing, as it helps brands connect with a more interested and engaged audience.

FAQs