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Do hashtags work on LinkedIn?

By Miles Burke · Updated 10 October 2026 · 6 minute read

What hashtags do on LinkedIn today

A hashtag is a word or phrase with a # in front of it, which LinkedIn turns into a link. As of October 2026 it does three things:

• It links posts together. Clicking a hashtag shows other posts that use it.
• It labels the post. A reader skimming the feed can see the subject at a glance.
• It can gather a conversation. An event, a campaign or a community can agree on one tag so their posts are easy to find together.

What it does much less than it used to is decide who sees your post. LinkedIn has changed how hashtags work more than once, and it now reads the words of a post to work out its subject. A post about hiring is understood to be about hiring whether or not it carries #Hiring.

Do hashtags increase reach?

Nobody outside LinkedIn can say for certain, and the tests people publish contradict each other. Some find a small lift, some find none, and a few find that long lists of hashtags do worse. Those tests cover different accounts, different subjects and different years, so none of them tells you what will happen with yours.

What can be said with confidence is narrower:

• A hashtag will not rescue a weak post, and a strong post does not need one.
• A few relevant hashtags are very unlikely to hurt.
• The subject, the opening lines and the timing of a post matter far more than its tags.

How many, which ones and where

• How many: three is plenty, and five is a sensible ceiling. A block of fifteen makes a post look like an advertisement.
• Which ones: choose tags that describe the post specifically. #SupplyChain says more than #Business. A tag for your event or community is the most useful kind, because people look for it on purpose.
• Where: on their own line at the end. Tags scattered through a sentence make it harder to read.
• How to write them: no spaces or punctuation, and a capital at the start of each word, as in #PersonalBranding. The capitals make a tag readable, and they help screen readers say it correctly.

How to test hashtags on your own posts

Your own posts can answer the question for your account, which is the only one that matters to you.

1. Export your analytics. The spreadsheet lists your top posts with their impressions and engagements. See how to export your LinkedIn analytics.
2. Mark each post as having hashtags or not. You will need to open the posts to check.
3. Compare the medians. Take the middle value of impressions for each group, and do the same for engagement rate. Use the median so one viral post does not decide the result.
4. Check the groups are fair. You need at least five posts in each, on similar subjects. If every post with hashtags was also about your most popular topic, you have measured the topic, not the tags.

If you have always used hashtags, or never have, there is nothing to compare. Run a deliberate test instead: for six weeks, alternate between posts with three hashtags and posts with none, keeping the subjects and posting days as alike as you can, then compare.

If the two groups come out about the same, which is the most likely result, you can stop worrying about hashtags and spend the effort on your opening lines.

Common mistakes

• Stuffing. Ten or twenty hashtags in the hope that one of them works.
• Borrowing a trending tag that has nothing to do with the post. It brings the wrong readers, if it brings any.
• Opening with hashtags. The first two lines decide whether anyone reads on.
• Using only the broadest tags. #Marketing and #Leadership are used on so many posts that yours will not be found through them.
• Treating hashtags as the strategy. They are a detail. See what impressions measure and how to increase engagement for the things that move your numbers.

Common questions