The death of #Hashtags?

The decline of X and hashtag fatigue

X has changed significantly in recent years, going from Twitter to X, changing ownership and seeing many of its audience leave for alternate platforms like Threads and Bluesky. Twitter, now X, was the main driver for hashtags growing as they did, with other social platforms adopting this trend in their interfaces, too.

Platforms like Instagram allow users to include up to 30 hashtags in their posts, which people can use without considering their purpose. Facebook seemingly has no limit on how many hashtags you can use in one post, which has led to posts with high numbers of hashtags appearing as spam. X always remained the most relevant place to use hashtags with its stricter word limit, reducing the number of hashtags in one post, which controlled hashtag fatigue.

According to stats acknowledged by X CEO Linda Yaccarino, the number of X daily users has dropped by 11.6% in 2023 compared to daily users before Musk acquired the platform, and analysis of various stats shared by Yaccarino and Musk by SocialMediaToday indicates that average daily time users spend on X has decreased by 6 minutes a day since March 2024. We see this in our social media research too; X has become a less pleasant place for users to spend time, so fewer users and brands are creating in that space. Consequently, there is less potential for hashtags and less value in using them.

Is there value in using Hashtags?

Hashtags were always meant to be used to highlight relevant posts about events, campaigns, or movements. Instead, they became a way to grow new niches and have your content seen by new people on mass on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. However, this method of marketing has become so oversaturated that creators’ and brands’ content is being lost in a sea of posts all using the same hashtags. Hashtags seem to have lost some of their value, especially on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, if not used responsibly.

Hashtag best practice

If you are using hashtags in 2025, it should be with intent and purpose e.g. for an event such as the #LondonMarathon which will expand your content’s audience and grow your community.

Use Hashtags sparingly. Lots of hashtags at the end of a post will result in little to no gain for the content. Instagram suggests only using highly relevant hashtags for your content, and LinkedIn recommend a maximum of 2-5 hashtags, with a mixture of trending and highly relevant terms.

In all cases, if a hashtag is vague or too broad, you don’t need it. Tailor your hashtags to your target audience and content. Try integrating it into your sentences so it doesn’t look spammy and stand out, detracting users from the value in your content.

If you’d like help navigating the minefield of organic social media, please get in touch. Our experts would love to help.