When do hashtags make sense in a social post (and actually DO something for you) and when are they unnecessary?

Someone asked about hashtags during one of my social media workshops recently, so I thought this would be a good time to share my current advice about them with you.

In general, I think they’re overused. On a couple of platforms, they still make sense.

How We Got Here

Hashtags are a way of organizing social media so that people can quickly find posts related to a particular topic.

You put the hash or pound sign (#) in front of a word, and that word then becomes hyperlinked. Click it, and it will bring up every post on the platform that includes that same hyperlinked, hashtagged word.

For example, as native and indigenous tourism grows in the U.S., the former AIANTA (American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association) now renamed the American Indigenous Tourism Association encourages people to use the hashtag #DiscoverNativeAmerica on Instagram and in posts on other social sites.

(Tip – notice how I capitalized the first letter of each word in that hashtag? It’s called “CamelCase” and it makes a hashtag easier to read and more accessible for everyone, including those with visual disabilities who use screen readers.)

When you click that hyperlinked #DiscoverNativeAmerica hashtag above, the results are not just AIANTA posts, but the top results of anyone who has used the hashtag in their IG post. (You used to be able to toggle between Top and Most Recent hashtag search results on IG, but now it’s only Top.)

Hashtags started in 2007 with a tweet from blogger and product strategist Chris Messina, as a way to somewhat organize the Twitter firehose. “Getting a hashtag to trend on Twitter / X” used to be a big goal for making an internet splash.

My gut instinct about the future of hashtags tells me that they are not as important as they used to be for organizing information and for discoverability (getting your posts found by people.)

Search engines on social sites have gotten much better about bringing up and grouping posts about related topics in their search results without needing hashtags to do it.

That is why improving your social SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important – keywords matter in social posts as much as they do on websites and in blog posts.

Remember that social posts can show up in Google search, too. Words matter.

Hashtags on Instagram – Yes

Hashtags still help discoverability on Instagram.

You can use a maximum of 30, but you probably don’t need that many. Use a mix of broad/general hashtags and more niche, specific ones that are related to your IG post.

Putting them in the actual post rather than in a comment is fine. I group mine in an area below the main caption in the post.

Related post – How to do Instagram hashtag research

On Instagram, you can Follow a particular hashtag, and the IG algorithm will mix posts that have it into your feed, even if you don’t already follow the account that posted. That is how hashtags help people find your posts and your account.

If you want visitors to use one particular destination-related hashtag, put it in your IG bio, and USE IT YOURSELF IN YOUR POSTS. Not that I see this forgotten all the time, or anything . . .

Monitor “your” hashtag on IG, and if someone uses it in a positive way, engage with their post, thank them, and maybe share it to your Story. They’re doing your marketing for you!

Hashtags on Facebook – No

Hashtags work on Facebook in that you click them and they go somewhere, and they were launched on there as far back as 2013, but they are still not a Facebook “thing.”

Every social media platform has its own culture and language and quirks, and hashtags have never been part of Facebook culture.

Craft your content to fit the culture of each platform.

If you use Meta Business Suite or a third-party scheduler, please do not push the exact same post at the exact same time to Facebook and Instagram, and not only because you want to reach different audiences at different times.

I see broken tags and hashtag clutter all the time on Facebook posts, and I know it’s somebody trying to save themselves 60 seconds in the scheduler.

As a result, they’re posting less effective content.

Take the 60 seconds, remove those hashtags for the FB version of your post, and check any tags to ensure that you’re tagging a FB Page, not an Instagram account.

Hashtags on Twitter / X – Yes

For those who still have active accounts on Twitter / X, hashtags are not as important there as they used to be, but they do still work and I recommend adding a few related ones to your posts.

Related post – Will Threads replace Twitter? aka, yes I think Twitter has become a dumpster fire 

Monitor “your” hashtag on Twitter / X, and if someone uses it in a positive way, engage with their post, thank them, and share it.

Hashtags on Threads – Yes

Meta’s Threads is still releasing features as it grows, and they do now allow one hashtag in a Threads post.

In a quirk of the platform, you can use more than one word in a Threads hashtag, with spaces between the words if you want.

The actual hash or pound sign sometimes disappears, too, but the words stay hyperlinked. If you mess up, you get 5 minutes after publishing to fix things.

So, there is a TravelThreads and a Travel Threads.

Which one is better? I don’t know. ‍‍

The Threads platform doesn’t really give you data about this, although in the dropdown of options the two-word Travel Threads hashtag is always at the top, so I generally use that one.

When I simply search for “travel threads” – no hashtag – I get almost the same search results, which again tells me that the social media search engines can find related posts about topics much better than they used to, without hashtags.

Hashtags on LinkedIn – Currently Weird, So Maybe? If You Speak French?

My answer used to be Yes for hashtags on LinkedIn, but only 1-3 per post, and in not every post, because they’re not part of LinkedIn culture yet. I would get some engagement on my posts from non-followers via hashtags, so it was worth pursuing.

I followed the #tourism and #eventprofs (event and meeting planners) hashtags on LinkedIn and often came across some interesting, relevant LI people and posts.

Then, about a year ago or more, I noticed that almost every post in those hashtagged feeds was in French, except for promoted posts/ads. It didn’t matter if I switched the feed from Top results to Recent results.

It’s not that I don’t want to connect with French-speaking tourism, hospitality, or economic development folks, but something is broken here.

So, pay attention to keywords in your LinkedIn posts, and throw in the occasional relevant hashtag to see if it works for you. Otherwise, hold off until they fix this issue.

Hashtags on YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, etc. – Can’t Hurt, Don’t Overdo It

Again, SEO matters in your social media posts, so think about keywords just as you do with website pages and blog posts. All of the social platform search engines have gotten very good at surfacing related posts around topics. They don’t necessarily need hashtags to do it.

I played around with hashtags on my YouTube Shorts vertical video uploads because I read somewhere that adding #Shorts and #YouTubeShorts to video descriptions was helpful.

Then I thought, “That’s silly; YouTube automatically classifies any of my vertical videos as Shorts. It knows. I don’t have to tell it with a hashtag.”

On YouTube and Pinterest, smart keyword-rich titles and descriptions are more important than hashtags.

On TikTok, 3 – 6 hashtags can be helpful within the caption space limits.

There are specific ones like #fyp and #ExplorePage that people use to try to get featured, which of course means they’re grossly OVER-used.

There are community hashtags like #BookTok for literature lovers and #TravelTok for, yes, travel enthusiasts. Do some research to see what’s popular with your audience.

Here is a good post from Buffer about TikTok hashtags.

What are your thoughts on hashtags these days? Let me know in the comments.

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