Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today, we're talking about hashtags. What are they? And are they still relevant for social media. So hashtags are the little symbols, the pound sign, if you're old enough like us to remember the pound sign, that used to stand for number. And then when social media came around, especially X, formerly known as Twitter, they were the main ones that decided hashtags were, not decided, but it made it part of their focus to use hashtags, and it made sense. So you could follow a hashtag, you could click on a hashtag and see all the other things that people were saying surrounding that hashtag. There were Twitter chats using those hashtags, and there were trending hashtags. And that was a lot of fun and very simple and easy to find in the sea of tweets. Remember those good days?
Melanie
Yeah, it's a search tool or it was as a search tool.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
But it's becoming less and less relevant. And that's mostly because, A., it was using up space. So previously we would only have 140 characters in a tweet, which is now called a post. Now, if we've got verified, we can use as many characters as we want.
Esther
And if not, it's 280.
Melanie
280. But if you use hashtags as part of that in X, then you don't have 280 characters to use.
Esther
Well, you use them strategically within the tweet. I'm still calling it a tweet. You could say, looking for a #journalist or things like that. And you were going to be using the word journalist anyway, but using the hashtag made it appear.
Melanie
People still use #journalrequest. Absolutely.
Esther
Yeah, absolutely. And we were at a conference recently, Social Media Fest, and still using the hashtag across all platforms that they were monitoring on the day to share with other people the information coming out of the conference. Doesn't have the same impact or use anymore, though. A lot of people are stepping away from using hashtags because on platforms like Instagram, we have a maximum of 30 hashtags that we can use. And personally, it just looks like #vomit if people have used them all. I like to use between three and five, seven at a pinch. But using all 30 always felt really icky and spammy and where am I getting all these words from type thing. But even the owner of Instagram, Adam-.
Melanie
Massari.
Esther
Massari. Can never get his name. Sorry, the founder of Instagram, because we now know Meta owns Instagram. But the founder came out recently and said that basically hashtags are irrelevant and not needed anymore.
Melanie
Yeah, you try telling everybody else that.
Esther
Exactly. But you do have other people saying that they are still necessary and still relevant, but just in a more strategic way. Because I saw an argument the other day on TikTok as well about hashtags and not using hashtags.
Melanie
Adam has said, honestly, it's not really any good for reach anymore. He recommends a more audience-focused strategy, which honestly, we should be doing anyway. The hashtag should have been just complementing and being helpful for search, basically SEO. Up until the last, I suppose, year or so, I would be telling people to do three to five hashtags in three different areas, one describing the image or video that they were putting up, depending on where it was going, then the next three to five describing the audience they're trying to target, and the next three to five describing themselves. With a maximum of 15, absolute maximum. Plus a branded hashtag. Always do a branded hashtag.
Esther
So in your case, it would be Stompy. In my case, it would be an IPA group.
Melanie
Yeah. So it was just a case of getting into a good habit because I knew that they would forget to do some hashtags. So just by saying do three to five, I knew they'd do one to three.
Esther
But you make a good point about using a branded hashtag because that's something that a lot of people forget to do. And it's one that can automatically make the content yours. Because as we know, there's a lot of plagiarism going on and a lot of content stealing going on. So having your hashtag in the small bundle of hashtags makes it more related to your business. So they can be used to promote brand awareness. You can ask people to use your hashtag when they want to ask you a question, things like that. And then you monitor, importantly, you monitor the hashtag and answer anybody that's going on. Because I think If I'm right, they've now taken away the ability to follow hashtags on Instagram.
Melanie
Yes.
Esther
You used to be able to, and it was fabulous, and you could follow, in our case, our industry related hashtags. I used to enjoy following other marketers or marketing tips and things like that because you're so deep in the industry that you forget the basics. But niche specific hashtags like that can focus people into thinking about different things. So if they're very fit over 50 or something, that's very niche for a certain age group about fitness.
Melanie
Another place where people use hashtags or previously did was LinkedIn. It doesn't seem to be as desired anymore. I stopped doing hashtags in LinkedIn last year, 2024. I put one in occasionally just so that it shows some commonality. But yeah, I stopped doing them on a standard basis quite some time ago. I don't see that many hashtags in Pinterest anymore either. So there really does seem to be a pullback, a drawback from using hashtags on these different platforms. And I think some of that's down to AI. And I think some of it's also down to the fact that people are using video more, where you don't really need hashtags so much.
Esther
Although, right?
Melanie
Go on.
Esther
This is where my point was coming in earlier about TikTok, because on TikTok, you see lots of hashtags underneath the videos. And The person that was ranting, I'm not going to name them, but they were saying, Don't just use #FYP, which means For You Page or #ForYou Page. You will show up on the For You Page if your content is good enough. But do use industry specific or trending hashtags that have nothing to do with the FYP because everybody jumped on the FYP one and then you're fighting with millions of people to get onto the FYP. But if you're using a trending hashtag, because there used to be, we've talked about previously, days of the year. And for example, Earth Day or Mother's Day or Father's Day, Valentine's Day, all of these things people will use those at the time of year and then they become very trending. You could make one that would become trending. But they should be used sparingly. So the person was saying, those that have a whole screen, if you were to click on the more, it comes up with the whole screen full of hashtags. That's too many, too many. Just three to four, even on TikTok, because like Melanie was saying, the AI should be understanding the video enough to know who to push it to, because the algorithms hate those with a passion because they keep changing on a lot of platforms. But especially on TikTok, they do become aware of what you're watching and feed you more of that. So it is working on that specific platform, and we're hoping that it'll come into the other platforms, too, and stop just giving us the bad news. But having an effective hashtag use in 2025 is to understand your audience, which we've told you, I think in every single podcast that we've done, and we're now on 280 something. Choose the right mix of hashtags. If you don't want to use hashtags, you don't have to use them. It's not mandatory anymore in any of the platforms, but use them strategically to enhance your content's deliverability. And search-ability.
Melanie
Also, I think relying on just using hashtags is so last year.
Esther
The last decade, I think at this point.
Melanie
It's going that way. I do agree with Adam that it should be audience-based strategies. If you can edutain or educate or communicate in some way that's beyond just the messaging, I think people take that away more. People are looking for an experience. People are looking for what's in it for me. How is this going to improve my life? Make things easier for me? Cost me less. And if you can break that down into more videos or even carousels, that's going to be more useful than hashtags.
Esther
Yeah. And for those that have never used hashtags, you don't have to start now. And for those that have always used hashtags, you don't have to just suddenly stop.
Melanie
No, just chill out a bit.
Esther
You can relax a little because a lot of the software that people use to schedule posts give option to see if hashtags and see if clusters of hashtags and stuff. So you didn't even have to think about it anymore, which wasn't very strategic use of hashtags. So if you were always talking about fit over 50 and your post was about a newborn baby, it really didn't make any sense.
Melanie
And a lot of them remember what you've put up in the past. I know that in Meta Business Suite, it remembers the, the ones you use frequently and even suggest them.
Esther
Yeah. Yeah. But what we're saying is they haven't fully died. They're not as alive as they used to be. But don't feel obliged to either cut them out or include them. It should be a personal strategic method that your business will or won't use them. You might want to stand out and be the one to keep using 30 hashtags. Please don't.
Melanie
Please don't. No, there's really no need. And I still think if you are going to continue down the route of doing hashtags, you still need to research them and you still need to test them.
Esther
Yes.
Melanie
Because trust me, what you've been using for the last couple of years will very likely no longer be relevant.
Esther
Yes. And on that point, can I add in that you should be putting in capital letter at the start of each word inside the hashtag? Now, this is for two reasons. One, it could be misread as something completely different. And two, it helps people who are dyslexic to actually distinguish where the word starts and ends. So you're helping the diversity within your audience to understand what's being said and you're not being misinterpreted about a pen island. Just leave that one there with you.
Melanie
I can't believe you went there. I can't no. I'm not going to draw any more attention to that.
Esther
It happened. There are many examples.
Melanie
No, stop.
Esther
There are many other examples, and I'm not going to go into them at all. But yes, Tell me you haven't misread a hashtag before now and then had to read over it again going, really? What? Oh, that's what it says. It happens. It happens. So put a capital letter at the start so it doesn't happen. So it's a little trick for you there.
Melanie
Okay, moving on. So we hope that we've got the conversation started here about hashtags. We would love to hear from you to hear if you advocate for the hashtag or not. Tell us by DM, tell us in responding to our posts on social, where do you stand on hashtags as the war on hashtags began? So that's all we have time for for now. But we'll be back next week with another podcast. Have a great week. And I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
Esther
Bye.
Melanie
Do you reckon somebody will actually respond?
Esther
They'll probably find the other examples of how not to do a hashtag and respond with those.
Melanie
That would be fun and probably not very good.
Esther
Well.
Melanie
It would be fun.
