Hashtags Are Not Dead: Here's How to Use Them in 2025

Today is the day that we have a conversation about hashtags. I’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about how hashtags don’t work anymore or how they decrease your reach, and I know you’ve been hearing them too. So are they dead? Or are they still a powerful tool for your content? We’ll look at how hashtags (and keywords) can still be an effective way to maximize your reach and categorize your content. 

In this episode we’ll be covering:

• Remember my experiment with testing longer reels? The initial results are in!
• How hashtags work, how many to use, and how to use them to categorize your content so it reaches the right audience.
• The evolution of hashtags over the years, including their effectiveness and different strategies. 
• Hashtags, keywords and the algorithm - how it all works together to make sure the right content gets to the right people.
• We’re reviewing real time examples and what results I am currently seeing in my own clients' content.
• Integrating keywords into your content strategy and where to find the best ones related to your niche!

Other episodes you might have missed:

• Episode 012: Ditching the Toxic Advice on Instagram
• Episode 014: Why Creating Specific Content Leads to Higher Engagement
• Episode 020: SEO Strategies to Optimize Your Instagram Content
• Episode 034: Is Engagement the Most Important Metric on Instagram?

Links to reels in this episode:

• Reel #1: Healthcare
• Reel #2: House

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Transcript

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:00]:
I am your host, Shannon McKinstrie. Welcome to Good Content, the podcast where I remove the never ending content creation guesswork and overwhelm so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked Good Content well. Hey, friend. We are finally working on the podcast room. It is a hot mess and I just can't concentrate in there right now. So greetings from my sunroom. So last week we talked about all the crazy changes that Instagram did and some people are very upset.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:37]:
We just gotta roll with it, right? I think the dust is settled. Everyone's fine now. We got our grids, everything's cool. So I did test out a longer reel last night. I actually posted it. I think it's about two minutes actually. Let me see. It is right at the 2 minute mark.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:50]:
So far it's almost at 30,000. And again, it's. It's only been up about 14, 15 hours. That's about typical for me. I'm usually about 30, 40,000 views within 24 hours, typically. And then they go up from there. So I'm not saying anything drastic, but I'll keep an eye on it and I'm probably gonna do one more that's a little longer and see how they do. So just kind of fun experiment.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:09]:
And let's talk about what the reel was about because I'm doing another one today because, you guys, as we ended 2024, I was like, oh my gosh, the nonsense has died down. There really hasn't been so much noise with crazy, crazy advice that makes no sense, right? That social media managers and marketers who have been doing this forever, we're all DMing each other. Like, who is saying this stuff? I get DMs all day long being like, hey, so and so said hashtags are no longer or any content with hashtags isn't being pushed out anymore. That's the DM I got. So I did a reel on that last night, which was about two minutes long. You guys, I've had two reels go viral in the past few weeks. Both had eight plus hashtags. If hashtags were ruining reach, then that wouldn't have happened.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:50]:
Okay, so let's talk hashtags first, right? This is the big rumor. And guess what? If Instagram phases out hashtags, you'll hear it from me first and Adam Mosseri first. Not some random person who says they're an expert and just wants to sell a course. And I digress. So I will say, years ago, as A social media manager, this stuff would float and my clients would send it to me and be like, Shannon, let's stop doing this. Because someone said, and I'm like, you guys, I'm the one managing 10 plus accounts in different industries. Trust me, they're lying. I've been dealing with this so long that I'm finally just.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:21]:
I'm just done. I'm tired. So I have taken upon myself for years to debunk myths, and now I'm on a rampage, if you, if you will. Because I'm just like, everyone is on edge right now. Everyone is stressed out. And then you guys want to come on here and spread these lies on Instagram and distract people from actual marketing strategies. And I was also like, we're talking hashtags. Like, hashtags are like the least of people's worries.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:44]:
So with that said, I did some digging on threads, asking people what they thought. Have they noticed anything with hashtags? And the Instagram accounts I still manage, meaning I'm the one behind the account, not the business owner. Both are hyper local, right? Two of the ones that I manage are hyperlocal. Those local hashtags help so much because one, it helps the algorithm know who to push it out to, and it just helps categorize it. And anyone searching hashtags, they'll see it. So some people said, I stopped using hashtags and my reach got better. But here's the thing that I always tell people. We can never definitively say it was because of the hashtag or it was because of this.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:18]:
Maybe your hooks got better, maybe the keywords got better, right? But here's the thing. Someone chimed in and was like, I think what it is, and I think this person is right. He said, the people who stopped using them and are starting to see more reach were probably not using hashtags correctly to begin with. So now it's helping. And I was like, that actually makes so much sense. So years ago, we used to call them niche hashtags, right? We're like, we were. We really doubled down on niche hashtags.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:42]:
This is back in like 2019 ish. And you wanted smaller hashtags and you would maybe throw in two large ones. Like, that was my mathematical equation for myself. Like I would do 20 hashtags and I try to make like 80% of them really niche. I'd throw in a couple medium sized ones, meaning like around 500,000 posts and then over a million. I'd throw in like two or so. Because back then you Guys, it was not an even playing field. Only the big time creators were actually getting seen.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:08]:
So us little guys were fighting for our lives to get in the newsfeed. You know, the Explore page back then. Now we have a lot more opportunity to get in front of people because of reels. But so the niche hashtags are where we kind of lived to kind of grow our followings. Anyway, that's how it was. Now you kind of actually large hashtags. It was what, like three years ago, they announced like, oh, large hashtags. Now smaller creators will be seen in large hashtags.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:30]:
I won't bore you with the details. It works totally different now. If, you know, you know, if you've been growing since then, you know, then we all switched to using more like maybe an even niche medium large. Now I'm like, doesn't matter what you want to do. You don't have to worry about the size of the hashtag as much as you used to. Like, you really used to have to worry about that. Like, if it was oversaturated, you're kind of like, no. Especially if you were less than 10,000 followers, you're like, no, I'm not going to show up there now.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:55]:
It's okay. Okay, so what my shift in hashtag strategy a couple years ago was I would use Instagram ones, social media ones, content creation ones, small business ones. But I did. It didn't matter if they were less, you know, if they were tiny, small, whatever. So what I do now is if my Instagram reel or carousel is about growing on Instagram, my hashtags are Instagram growth, IG growth, how to grow on Instagram, Instagram strategist, Instagram strategy, Instagram marketing. Right. If it's about reels, my hashtags are hashtag reels, tips, hashtag reelstipstrategy hashtag. You see what I'm saying? Like, I make sure that my hashtags are very niche to the reel itself.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:39]:
And I will do this sometimes because again, I like to test stuff. I'll put throw in social media marketing. But I'm like, no, I think that's the big thing. You want it to be so specific. So it's like, what are the words that someone would be searching for that reel? If you're a nutritionist and you're making a dinner, I would do high protein dinner. Let's see actually. Oh, let's. Let's have some fun nerding out.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:59]:
Here I go. High protein hashtag. I typed in the search. High protein 2.8 million views. I would use it five years ago. It would have been like too big. Isn't that funny? Changes. But hashtags still work the same way.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:13]:
You use em to search, et cetera. High protein meals, high protein diet. Those are ones I would use. Cause if my reel is about a high protein thing, that's cause me my hashtags and then I'll throw in like maybe your hook also said as a mom of four mom hacks, like whatever it is. Right. I really hope that makes sense, especially if you're on YouTube. Like comment away like I love answering questions over there. Or shoot me a DM if you have questions.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:35]:
But that's what I mean. Same as you want to focus on keywords on screen verbally. Your script, quote unquote, your reel script, your caption, your carousels, you want those to be keyword rich. Get a lot of questions about keywords. So let me just talk about them for a second. Let's say I'm gonna find actually I'm gonna find a really high performing reel and we're gonna talk about the hashtags. He is a healthcare, it says on his hook. And I'll send this to Steph.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:58]:
So it's in the show notes so you guys can look. Cause again, if hashtags were an issue, this reel wouldn't have done as well as it did. It has 88,000 likes, 32,000 shares in the hook. It says over his head, things I'll never do as a level one trauma healthcare worker. So he's giving advice on like things he wouldn't advise people do. So obviously those are key words. Healthcare, trauma. This helps the algorithm understand what his video is about.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:18]:
His caption then says, ambulance has the word ambulance, blah, blah, blah. So again, little keywords. So now the algorithm knows this is about your health. Okay, hashtags ems, hashtag trauma hospital, hashtag emergency medicine, hashtag emergency room, hashtag healthcare, hashtag healthcare professional, hashtag ER nurse, hashtag ambulance, hashtag hospital life. He didn't do hashtag pediatrician because he's not talking to children and parents. He's talking to adults in this one. And here's another one. 15,000 likes.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:49]:
Sending it to Steph. It says on the screen, guess how tall our kitchen ceiling is. And then they kind of go through a whole story of what they did with their kitchen. Okay, what are keywords there? So going back to the healthcare guy, if I'm someone who's been searching health related stuff, Instagram is possibly going to show me that real Cause it knows it. It's looking at everything we're looking at. It's also going to show it to people in his field, and they're going to comment and engage with it too, to give their two cents. Right, so this one for the interior designer, tall ceilings keyword. So if I am renovating a house or you're trying to figure out how to decorate and I search tall ceiling, this likely could pop up.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:29]:
That's what I mean. So what are people searching for? You want to make sure those words are in your hook, they're in your caption, they're in your script. Okay, so lastly, she had 15,000 likes. Let's see, hashtags, kitchen design, kitchen details, cream kitchen, marble kitchen. Hashtag heart of the home. Hashtag colonial style. Hashtag colonial home. She has some extra ones, but still, when you look at the design of this home and the purpose of her page, which is colonial style, it all tells the algorithm what this account and post is about.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:00]:
Now, she threw in some, definitely a little. Few extra ones. So again, it just shows you don't be scared to test, don't be scared to see what hashtags do best for you. You want to use three hashtags. Cool. You want to use 15, like she did. And like, I typically do, do it. The biggest thing, guys, is all these things are out there to just distract you.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:18]:
Do what's best for you. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to Chat GPT if you're still unsure about keywords in your field, things like that, which is again, why I stress specificity so much on this podcast and on Instagram and everywhere else. I stress specificity because it helps the algorithm, but it also grabs attention to your audience. So if you want to lean on things like Chat GPT, say, actually, let's do. Right now, I'm curious. I'm going to say Chat GPT, what are key words? And I wouldn't just say, for home design, you want to have, like, different. For kitchen, reno.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:49]:
I'm just curious. Enter. Got it. All right, I typed in, what are some keywords for kitchen design? I got, Ooh, this is fun. I got modern kitchen design, contemporary kitchens, rustic kitchen ideas, minimalist kitchens. So again, you can make a list of all these so that you have these words. They also have features and elements. Keywords, kitchen island ideas, backsplash trends.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:10]:
So again, know all the keywords in your niche. Another place I like to go is TikTok. So literally just search your niche. But I think the Best place to start. Especially if you're just starting out and you're like I don't know where the keywords are, what think what are people searching? And lean on ChatGPT for it. Go to TikTok and as long as you have a good mix of keywords in your captions, your hooks, all that and a mix of hashtags, the algorithm is going to know exactly what your content is about and it's going to show it to more people who are interested in that content. Remember, it used to be a more so relationship based feed. It is in a way still, but it's definitely more interest based now.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:47]:
That's why when I'm scrolling Explore scrolling the real estate, it's a bunch of things to do in North Carolina with your family. It's a bunch of food. It's like stuff I'm interested in. And let me end with this. I was hosting a training for a membership last week, earlier this week and someone asked like I'm scared to engage with stuff outside of my niche. I don't want to mess up the algorithm. And I again, I hate that people have spread these silly rumors that if you engage with stuff outside of your niche, the algorithm is going to punish you and not show your stuff to your people. My Explore page is based on what I'm interested in.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:19]:
It is food, it is toddler mom humor, it is reality show gossip and Jimmy Fallon. It is coats I can buy, it's a mom eating Chipotle making a joke. More girl mom stuff. Valentine's sweaters at Target. Is any of that Instagram? Is any of that marketing? No, but my content goes out to people who want marketing. Our algorithms are trained to show us content we want to see and engage with because they want to keep us on the app. Your hashtags and your keywords work together to tell the algorithm what your content is about so it shows it to the right people. Hashtags are not dead.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:00]:
And the moment they are, I will be the first to let you know. I promise. Hashtags are not ruining your posts. If you do find that your content does better without them, then don't use them. If you're like me and hashtags have helped you for years, I can't tell you how many times people have told me they found me through a hashtag, keep using them. I found my hairdresser through a hashtag. I found my bookkeeper through a hashtag. I found our house painters through a hashtag.

Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:20]:
I found my business partner through hashtag like you know, I get a little upset when people say they're not working. So there you go. That's the story on hashtags. Thanks for listening to me rant about hashtags, but I'm telling you, friend, I hope you took something away, whether it's hashtags, keywords. Your people are out there. They want to find you. So this is a really good thing to start studying and understanding, and I hope this helped you. Love you, friend.