Just before Christmas, Elon Musk directly addressed the use of hashtags on X, stating that the system doesn’t need them anymore and urging users to stop adding them to their posts.
This reflects a broader trend in the social media space, where hashtags are becoming less essential for post discovery.
X, Instagram and LinkedIn
In May 2024, Instagram’s chief Adam Mosseri acknowledged that while hashtags can align posts with certain communities, their overall impact on post visibility is minimal.
LinkedIn expert Richard van der Blom also found in his research that hashtags no longer help to expand post reach in that app either.
You might remember that LinkedIn actually resisted hashtags for a very long time only to add them again in 2018, when it put a bigger emphasis on hashtag use for content discovery.
But today, the emphasis is shifting once again.
All change
In February 2024, LinkedIn phased hashtags out from its Creator Mode on-profile displays. And through the year, the platform conversation topics and keywords began to be relied on more heavily to surface relevant information for professionals.
Hashtags still serve some use, mainly to help find and build communities.
However, based on current trends, platform feedback and our own observations over the past year, they should no longer be a primary strategic consideration for digital content recommendations.
Hashtags will remain effective in specific cases like industry events or awareness days, where they help add context to the conversation, but moving forward, it’s best to avoid hashtags that simply repeat the terms already included in the post.
The future of hashtags
Instead, as the platforms’ search functionalities evolve, the focus should be on incorporating relevant SEO keywords within the text, as this is more likely to enhance post reach and make it easier for the target audience to find content in busy feeds.
In 2025, generic hashtags will no longer suffice, but two or three highly tailored industry-specific hashtags will likely still serve a purpose.
In a world where social media platforms are now akin to search engines, and algorithms are better able to recognise user intent, that approach should be the new best practice.
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