Is the Hashtag Dead? #RIP

It wasn’t all that long ago that hashtags were deemed the holy grail when it came to increasing your reach on digital platforms. In their infancy, hashtags on social media were useful tools to categorise your content so that new followers could discover your profile. As time ticks on, the algorithms on social platforms have become more sophisticated, which begs the question – is the hashtag dead?

The Culprit

Before we start planning the funeral, it’s important to consider the rapid developments in social media that have led us here. The implementation of AI technology into algorithms has revolutionised the categorisation of content. What once was a predominantly manual endeavour, has been taken into the ninja-like hands of artificial intelligence. AI algorithms can analyse contexts and sentiments with incredible precision to automatically place content into specific categories – pushing them out to relevant users.

#StillGotIt

Before you mourn, hashtags aren’t exactly obsolete just yet. While they are no longer the only tool for categorising content across platforms, they still have their place in trending topics and viral campaigns. Today, the golden rule of hashtags is quality over quantity. Gone are the days of generating a paragraph-long collection of hashtags to swamp either the caption or comment section of your posts. With AI doing most of the heavy lifting in terms of identifying content, contexts, and sentiments, hashtags should now be personalised for your brand. By customising hashtags, brands can increase their awareness and reach to wider audiences, as well as sparking conversations and promoting campaigns.

This new hashtag movement is being exemplified by plenty of large-scale companies. You’ll probably recognise these:

• #ShareACoke by Coca-Cola
• #MyCalvins by Calvin Klein
• #ShotoniPhone by Apple
• #SephoraSquad by Sephora

A great place to start is by using your brand name, as well as a few industry-relevant hashtags. Stay as specific as possible and try to not exceed 11 hashtags per post. A recent report by Mention found that engagement rates peaked on Instagram posts with 11 hashtags, followed closely by 4.

TL;DR

Don’t send your condolences just yet – hashtags may have lost their dominance in content categorisation at the hands of AI algorithms, but they remain a useful promotional tool to increase brand awareness.