Hashtags - Still helpful or dead?
Ah, hashtags — the timeless, algorithm-bending super hack to getting your social posts out to the masses. Except it doesn’t work that way.
If you know anything about hashtags, you know they were created with the intention of “grouping” or “tagging” consumer posts across social media. However, with the sheer volume of posts across platforms and the shift towards search-engine style algorithms, this idea is a thing of the past. Let me explain.
When Instagram was created in 2010 the app was designed to be a way for friends, families, and communities to connect. Users would do this through the sharing of real images and current happenings. People you knew or that wanted to know you would like your posts and follow you, thus creating a connected network. Hashtags, in this environment, would be used to group together content so that you could easily refer back and keep track of new content posted under that topic. For example, if I hosted a birthday party and invited everyone at the event to use the hashtag #gracebdayparty2025 on their posts, there would be a clear way to group together all posts from that specific moment.
Business profiles eventually came along and changed the game. Instagram was no longer a social network, but rather a marketing tool to reach you and the network you created along the way. This is known as monetization.
“How does this relate to hashtags?”, you ask. Let’s use an individual influencer to break it down.
When an influencer creates an account, let’s say around fitness, for example, they essentially niche themselves down into one category of content. This hyper-focused content eventually creates a focused community of users around their topic of choice.
Let’s now say its 2015 and influencers are beginning to emerge and you have a flood of images and videos under the #fitness or #wellness hashtags.
When large groups of people use the same generic hashtag users lose the ability to ever realistically filter through the massive amount of content. They would get lost in the black hole that is #fitness, therefore eliminating the value of “tagging” in the first place. At that point pages with tons of followers would begin to dominate the top of the hashtag page, creating an environment in which everyone sees the same thing… further rendering hashtags useless.
Fast forward back to 2025 and hashtags have completely changed. When you go to search on social media platforms like Instagram to find things relating to #fitness, the algorithm has a new way of searching their database for things you might like. Like Google, current algorithms are now scanning through posts, captions, bios, and more, across the platform, for keywords that match what you are looking for.
The CEO of instagram, over the course of time, has changed their story on the value/need of hashtags a few times, but as it currently stands, hashtags are simply another way to include more keywords in your captions. They do not function as an effective tagging/categorization system anymore. Now, if you want to show up higher in the search results, you need to be optimized. (What’s this? That’s a different blog for a different day.) Are hashtags the only factor when trying to become more search-friendly? No, definitely not!
At the end of the day, a huge misconception lies in the thought that hashtags are going to get your post shown to tons of like-minded individuals or throughout the local community. As you move through your marketing and social media strategies in 2025 and beyond make sure to take the updates with hashtags into consideration.
If you or a local business you know would benefit from this knowledge, make sure to share! Ready to learn more about having your socials managed by a professional? Schedule a FREE 15 minute consultation with me HERE.