The hashtag symbol has been around on social media for more than 20 years and there have been many guidelines out there – use 30 per post – now only use 10 per post etc.

The great hashtag debate has been a hot topic this year for marketers, as well for small businesses and answers vary depending on who you ask. But my research shows that they’re not dead yet, but you need to use them more strategically.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to talk about Instagram and Facebook.

What is a hashtag?

Originally they were used to help filter and organise conversations on Twitter, but over the past several years, Instagram and then Facebook have adopted them to help businesses to be seen and found on search engines.

Hashtags are words, phrases, or even numbers following the hashtag (#) symbol. They’re metadata tag operators (which is just a keyword or term assigned to a piece of information online) that categorize and track content on social media. That word or phrase is seen as a category for search engines.

They make it easier for your posts to be discovered by users who are searching for a specific topic, even if those people don’t follow you.

How do they work?

Primarily, they work by grouping and connecting to a post shared on social media. For example…

I often use the hashtag, #smallbizmarketingtips when I post on social media. I’m a marketing coach and content creator helping small businesses. So, this hashtag is relevant to my business. I often post tips for small businesses to help them with their marketing. Using this hashtag does what it says on the tin – it marks that particular post into the #smallbizmarketingtips category.

Not only does it categorise my content, so that when someone searches for #smallbizmarketingtips, my posts are often included under that hashtag. As hashtags are clickable for users, it also helps individuals find an array of tips from lots of different marketing businesses.

In a nutshell, a hashtag helps social media users connect with other businesses over specific topics and popular content – and acts as an invitation to discuss, view and engage with all sorts of content online.

Are hashtags dead?

Over the past couple of years, you’ll probably have noticed that businesses are using hashtags less. But that doesn’t mean that they’re dead!

The stats still show they work – for example ‘Instagram posts that include at least one hashtag gets an average of 29% more interactions for accounts that have less than 1000 followers.

For small businesses of all sizes in 2025, the hashtag is not a necessity, BUT it is a worth it from a marketing strategy point of view.

What are the benefits of using hashtags in 2025?

• Increased reach – adding a relevant hashtag or two allows your post to be discovered by people who DO NOT follow you. This is useful to help you gain more followers who are interested in what you post. Stat – Social media posts with hashtags boost the engagement of your audience by about 12.6%. It’s not a lot, but surely it’s worth it for any increase in engagement!
• Building your community – social media is exactly what it says on the tin – it’s about being sociable! Hashtags can help you build a community of like-minded people who can relate to your content.
• SEO – hashtags and SEO go hand in hand. They both use relevant words and phrases (keywords) to help your business be seen by more people. Hashtags improve your chances of being searched and found! Stat – 61% of social media users turn to Instagram and other platforms to find their next purchase.

So, hashtags are still viable, but it is advised to only use 3-5 on a post. They work – BUT only as part of a content strategy, where you can use hashtags and SEO to your advantage for your brand and for your business.

The other thing to be aware of is that you can be shadow banned by social media sites if you use too many or irrelevant hashtags in your post. The reason for this is because the social media platform thinks you’re a bot or spam account.

How do you know which hashtags are good for your posts?  

To decide which hashtags are good to use for your business and your posts, you need to know that it’s relevant and popular before you use it. You can do this by:

• Checking which hashtags your followers and customers use. This means they will relate to you and if they’re searching a hashtag they regularly use, your content could pop up.
• Use Facebook’s recommendations – when you are scheduling posts, as soon as you start to type a hashtag, you’ll get a drop down menu that will give you variants of what you’ve typed and the volume for each of those hashtags, so you’ll be able to see which ones are popular – try and use a mix of volumes.  
• Look at your competitor’s posts on their Facebook business pages and see what hashtags they use. They might have great engagement partly because of the hashtags they use, so you can add some of them to your list. This is not stealing their ideas, it’s just doing competitor analysis, which is all part of social media marketing.
• If you can, keep up with trending hashtags – you’d need to search to find out which ones are trending at any given time as they change regularly! Believe it or not, but trends play a huge role in social media algorithms.
• Just like you keep an eye on your insights on social media and monitor your website/email stats, it’s a good idea to monitor your hashtag usage too. Keep an eye on which hashtags are getting you the most reach and attracting the right people to your business.
• Create your own hashtag – this helps you build a connection with your business and followers. Not only can you use it, but your followers can too.
• Hashtags are both words and phrases – just keep an eye on the length of any phrases you use. Just as long-tail keywords can be more beneficial to your SEO, longer hashtags tend to be better than shorter ones. Stat – Hashtags with 21-24 characters do better than those with more or less characters and create a less competitive space.  

Hashtag best practice – a few extra tips!

• Use hashtags in sentences. For example, if you were sharing information about an event you’re attending, such as a night market, you’ll be doing a post about that. Instead of writing ‘This weekend you can find us at Makebelievemarket on Saturday #makebelievemarket’ – use the hashtag in the sentence, ‘This weekend you can find us at #makebelievemarket on Saturday. It looks tidier and incorporates the hashtag into your sentence.
• Don’t use spaces in hashtags. For example, you would use #makebelievemarket – NOT #Make Believe Market – as only the first word after the hashtag will count and it will be a completely different one – and not relevant to what you’re talking about!
• Make sure the hashtags you use are relevant to your content and your business. This seems obvious but a lot of people use hashtags for days of the week, for example #throwbackthursday. If your post is about a happy memory or a throwback of a previous product that you remember fondly, it’s relevant. If you’re writing about a new product or something irrelevant, it won’t help you with engagement if your post is found on that hashtag and that person is searching for #throwbackthursday.     
• Check your privacy settings. If the settings on your Facebook business page are set to followers only, then you’re wasting your time using hashtags, as you need your setting to allow non-followers to view your content. All my settings on my business Facebook page are set to ‘public’ so anyone can see anything I post. Ensure that your posts are ‘public’ too.
  
  Please note: If you’re using your personal profile page to test your hashtags, you’ll need to make your posts ‘public’ manually.   

Measuring your hashtag use  

You can measure how your hashtags are doing by looking at your ‘Insights’ on Facebook.

• Go to your insights and click on ‘posts.’
• You’ll see a breakdown of your engagement rate, type of post and total reach for each post.
• Now, it won’t give you hashtag performance, so you’ll need to work through your posts and data to find out whether your Facebook posts with hashtags work better than those without (so some testing to do), and over time you’ll be able to see which posts with a particular set of hashtags work better than other sets – again this will be through trial and error, and a bit of insight research

At first you may not see that much difference in results because you won’t have used a particular hashtag enough for it to build a connection between the hashtag and your page/business. This is another reason why fewer hashtags are easier to manage – you won’t know the results if you use shed loads!  

If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty of your hashtags, there are hashtag tools out there specifically for measurement purposes, which obviously come at a cost. I can’t recommend any particular tool as I don’t use them myself, but if you search hashtag measurement tools, you’ll get lots to look at!  

I hope this has helped in understanding how hashtags can work for you and your business. It might seem complicated, but once you get going, it will become second nature.

As always, if you need any help, feel free to message me on Facebook @cindymobeymarketing or email me cindymobey@outlook.com