We're having a little #ThrowbackThursday of our own today. There was a time when hashtags were the thing to use on social media. You'd squeeze as many as possible onto the end of a post in the hope of boosting visibility, reaching new audiences, and convincing the algorithm to show your content to more people.
#MondayMotivation, #L4L, #YOLO
Looking back, it feels a little bit like internet archaeology, and also makes us feel old… So if hashtags aren't the answer anymore, what is?
Social media has become a search engine
The idea of social media being used as a search engine has been bubbling away for years now. In fact, we wrote about it ourselves a few years ago when we explored social media as the new search engine frontier.
Since then, the behaviour has only become more obvious, most of us already do it without really thinking about it.
Looking for somewhere to eat? You might check TikTok.
Want to know whether a product is actually worth buying? Instagram reviews and creator content often feel more useful than a manufacturer's website.
Planning your next holiday or decorating project? Pinterest is probably getting involved at some point.
Trying to figure out how to do something? Chances are you'll head to YouTube before opening Google.
We all use different platforms for different kinds of questions now, even if we don't really think of it as "search". Social Media isn’t just somewhere we scroll while we’re waiting for the kettle to boil anymore.
The numbers back that up too. Research from Forbes Advisor found that 46% of Generation Z primarily use social media for information, while 35% of Millennials prefer social platforms over traditional search engines for discovering content and answers.
For marketers, that's a pretty significant shift, because if your audience is searching on social platforms, your content needs to be discoverable there too.
Why hashtags started disappearing
For over a decade, hashtags acted as filing cabinets for social media content. But social platforms have become much better at understanding content without relying entirely on hashtags.
Captions became smarter, image recognition improved, and engagement signals became more important. Platforms started understanding context rather than simply matching symbols.
At the same time, audiences began to associate long lists of hashtags with spammy growth hacks and engagement bait. A post ending with thirty hashtags felt a little like a website from 2008 promising to "click here to win an iPad".
Instagram itself recognised this shift, gradually moving its guidance away from the old "more is more" approach and towards using a handful of highly relevant hashtags instead.
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, has repeatedly pushed back against the idea that hashtags are a growth hack, saying they can help categorise content but don't meaningfully increase reach on their own.
Today, hashtags still have a role to play. They're just no longer the main event.
Welcome to Social SEO
If hashtags helped platforms understand what your content was about, keywords help platforms understand what your audience is looking for.
That's Social SEO in its simplest form.
Instead of asking:
"Which hashtags should we add?"
The question becomes:
"What would somebody actually search to find this?"
Imagine you're posting about a guide to improving PPC performance.
A few years ago your caption may have ended with: #PPC, #GoogleAds, #Marketing, #DigitalMarketing
Today, a better approach is to naturally include those topics in the content itself: "Our latest research explores how investment in Paid Social influences PPC performance, and why marketers should think beyond channel-by-channel reporting."
Those keywords now live inside the caption rather than hanging off the end of it.
Instagram is behaving more like Google
Instagram's own updates show just how seriously platforms are taking search.
Public business and creator posts can now be indexed by Google, meaning your Instagram content can potentially appear in traditional search results alongside websites and blogs.
At the same time, Instagram increasingly looks at things like:
- captions
- profile names
- usernames
- bio descriptions
- keywords
- image context
- engagement signals
- comments and conversations
In other words, platforms are becoming less interested in labels and more interested in intent.
They're increasingly trying to understand the context and meaning behind content, rather than simply matching hashtags to search queries.
Which means marketers need to start thinking a little more like SEO specialists.
So what should marketers actually do?
Thankfully, Social SEO isn't nearly as technical as traditional SEO can feel.
Most of it comes down to making your content easier for both people and platforms to understand.
A few good places to start:
- Use the words your audience would actually search for in captions and on-screen text.
- Include relevant keywords in your profile name and bio.
- Write descriptive captions rather than relying on hashtags to do the heavy lifting.
- Add alt text where platforms allow it.
- Use three to five relevant hashtags rather than twenty generic ones.
- Focus on content formats platforms currently favour, such as Reels and short-form video.
- Use trending audio where it genuinely makes sense for your content.
- Keep an eye on saves, shares and comments, as engagement remains a strong signal of relevance.
Most importantly, write for humans first.
The algorithm tends to reward content that real people find useful. Conveniently, that's probably what your audience wants too!
Why this matters in an AI and zero-click world
As AI Overviews, AI Max and zero-click search continue to reshape traditional SEO, social content is becoming another place where brands can be discovered without somebody ever visiting a homepage first.
People are increasingly finding answers directly in feeds, AI summaries, videos and search results rather than clicking through to websites.
That doesn't make your website less important. It simply means the places where people discover your brand are becoming more varied.
Social media is no longer just a channel for engagement and awareness. Increasingly, it's becoming part of the wider search journey too.
To wrap it all up
The platforms are evolving quickly and best practice changes constantly.
What worked three years ago often doesn't work today, and what works today might look completely different in another three years.
Keeping up with those changes is part of our job as an agency!
As marketers, we're constantly testing, learning and adapting so that when new developments emerge, whether that's Social SEO, AI Max or zero-click search, we're ready to help our clients make sense of what matters and what doesn't.
The good news is that you don't need to chase every trend or platform update to keep up.
Focus on creating useful content, use the language your audience actually uses, and make it easy for both people and platforms to understand what you're talking about. The rest tends to follow.
And if you'd like a hand figuring out what that looks like for your business, we're always happy to chat.
July 2, 2026
