How to Add Hashtags to a LinkedIn Profile

Adding hashtags to your LinkedIn profile is a simple move that boosts your visibility and clearly signals your expertise to anyone who lands on your page. This guide will walk you through exactly where to place them for maximum effect and how to choose the right ones to attract recruiters, clients, and connections in your field.

Why Bother with Profile Hashtags on LinkedIn?

You already use hashtags in your posts, so why add them to your static profile? Think of your LinkedIn profile as your professional landing page. Just like a website, you want it to be easily discoverable by the right people. Hashtags are a core part of how LinkedIn's search and recommendation algorithm understands who you are and what you care about. When used correctly on your profile, they do three powerful things.

1. Supercharge Your Discoverability

When someone inside or outside your network searches for a skill, topic, or industry on LinkedIn, the platform’s algorithm doesn't just scan posts. It also looks at profiles. By including relevant hashtags, you give the algorithm clear signals about your areas of expertise. More importantly, when people follow specific hashtags (like #ProjectManagement or #SaaSMarketing), LinkedIn may suggest your profile to them as a voice to follow in that space. You make it easier for opportunity to find you.

2. Clarify Your Personal Brand Instantly

In the few seconds a visitor spends glancing at your profile, you need to communicate who you are and what you do. Hashtags serve as powerful, scannable keywords that instantly define your niche. Seeing #ProductLedGrowth, #Fintech, and #CommunityBuilding listed at the top of a profile tells a much clearer story than a generic job title alone. It transforms your profile from a simple resume into a branding statement, showing visitors not just what your job is, but what you talk about, think about, and specialize in.

3. Connect with Niche Communities

Hashtags are the digital meeting places for professional communities on LinkedIn. Using a tag like #WomenInTech or #RevOps on your profile shows that you are an active participant in that community. It's a badge of identity that helps you connect with peers, find mentors, and attract followers who share your specific professional interests. You're not just a "Marketing Director", you're a marketing director focused on #DemandGeneration for #B2B companies. That specificity attracts higher-quality connections.

Where to Add Hashtags to Your LinkedIn Profile: The Key Locations

LinkedIn offers a few strategic spots to place hashtags directly on your profile. Each one serves a slightly different purpose, and using them together creates a comprehensive, keyword-rich presence.

1. Your Creator Mode "Talks About" Hashtags

This is the most important and prominent place to list hashtags on your profile. When you turn on Creator Mode, LinkedIn allows you to select up to five hashtags that appear directly below your headline. This section is explicitly designed to showcase the topics you discuss most often, making it the most powerful tool for profile-based branding.

Here’s how to enable it and add your hashtags:

• Navigate to your LinkedIn profile page.
• Scroll down to the Resources section (it’s usually below your Analytics).
• Click on Creator mode. If it's off, a window will pop up.
• Toggle it on and click Next. LinkedIn will then prompt you to add topics (hashtags) that you talk about.
• Type in your desired hashtags. Be sure to select them from the dropdown list to make them official. You can add up to five.

For example, a freelance copywriter might use: #Copywriting, #BrandStorytelling, #ContentStrategy, #EmailMarketing, and #SEO.

These hashtags are prominent, clickable, and directly tell LinkedIn's algorithm what kind of content and connections are relevant to you.

2. Your Profile Headline

While hashtags in your headline aren't clickable, they act as powerful keywords for LinkedIn's search algorithm. Your headline is one of the most heavily weighted parts of your profile for search, so including a keyword-focused hashtag or two can have a real impact on how you rank in search results.

The goal here isn’t to stuff it with a dozen tags, but to be strategic. Pick one or two of your most important keywords and frame them within your headline naturally.

Examples:

• "Sales Leader in B2B Tech | Driving Revenue with #AccountBasedMarketing Strategies"
• "Software Engineer | Building Scalable Systems in #GoLang and #CloudComputing"
• "Founder & CEO | Passionate about #SustainableFashion and Ethical Supply Chains"

This approach subtly reinforces your expertise without making your headline look messy or unprofessional.

3. Your "About" Section (Summary)

Your About section is the place to tell your professional story, and hashtags can help add structure and searchability to your narrative. Unlike the headline, hashtags in your About section are clickable. A great way to use them is at the end of your summary as a sort of "specialties" or "interests" list. This gives readers a quick, scannable overview of your skills and reinforces your core topics.

Avoid simply dropping a giant, unformatted block of tags. Instead, integrate them thoughtfully.

For example, you could end your summary with a clean list like this:

"My areas of expertise include team leadership, go-to-market planning, and channel partnerships."

Core Focus: #SaaS | #ProductMarketing | #MarketExpansion | #GTMStrategy

This method keeps your summary easy to read while ensuring it's optimized with valuable, clickable keywords that the algorithm and human readers can both appreciate.

4. Your "Experience" Section Descriptions

This is a more subtle but still effective place for hashtags. Within the descriptions for your current and past roles, you can add hashtags to highlight specific skills, methodologies, technologies, or projects. This adds another layer of searchable keywords to your profile and gives more context to your accomplishments.

Again, the key is to integrate them naturally, not to stuff them in.

Example within a role description:

"...Managed the full product lifecycle for our flagship enterprise software, leading to a 40% increase in user adoption. Implemented a new feedback loop based on #AgileMethodology and improved our design process by focusing on #UXresearch."

This helps your roles get surfaced in more specific searches (e.g., people looking for skills in Agile Methodology) and provides more rich detail about your professional experience.

The Art of Choosing Your LinkedIn Hashtags: A Simple Strategy

Placing hashtags is only half the battle. Choosing the right ones is what truly makes a difference. You want a mix of tags that reflect your expertise, connect with active communities, and strike a balance between broad reach and niche relevance.

Brainstorm Your Content Pillars

Start by asking yourself: what are the 3-5 core topics you want to be known for? These are your "content pillars." They're not just your job title, but the subjects you could talk about endlessly.

• Are you a recruiter? Your pillars might be #TalentAcquisition, #CorporateCulture, and #EmployerBranding.
• Are you a financial advisor? Maybe they're #WealthManagement, #RetirementPlanning, and #FinancialLiteracy.

Write these down. They are the foundation of your personal brand and will guide your hashtag selection.

Find Your Sweet Spot: Combining Broad and Niche Tags

Hashtags exist on a spectrum. On one end, you have broad tags with millions of followers (#leadership, #marketing). On the other, you have niche tags with just a few thousand (#b2bcontentstrategist). A strong strategy uses both.

• Broad Hashtags (e.g., #Technology): These are like shouting in a stadium. You have a chance to be seen by a massive audience, but there's a lot of noise. Use one or two of these to signal your general industry.
• Niche Hashtags (e.g., #CloudSecurityArchitecture): This is like having a deep conversation at a specialist workshop. The audience is smaller, but they're highly engaged and deeply interested in the topic. These are your best bet for attracting high-quality connections.

For your five Creator Mode spots, a good mix is 1-2 broader industry tags and 3-4 niche tags that reflect your specific expertise.

Do a Little Reconnaissance

Don't just guess which hashtags are best. Do a bit of simple research directly on LinkedIn:

• Use the Search Bar: Type a hashtag (e.g., "#DataScience") into the LinkedIn search bar and hit enter. It will show you exactly how many people follow that tag. Look for tags with a healthy number of followers but not so many that your voice will be lost.
• Look at Industry Leaders: Find 5-10 people in your field who you admire. Go to their profiles and see what hashtags they are using in their Creator Mode section and About summary. This will give you a great sense of the tags that active, engaged communities are built around.
• Follow the Hashtags Yourself: Before you commit a hashtag to your profile, follow it for a week. Pay attention to the content that shows up in your feed. Is this a conversation you want to join? Are the people posting relevant to your professional goals? If so, it’s a good fit.

Common Profile Hashtag Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

As you add hashtags, steer clear of a few common pitfalls that can make your profile look spammy or unprofessional.

• The Hashtag Overload: Adding a huge block of 20-30 hashtags to your About section or headline is a major mistake. It’s hard to read and looks desperate. The Fix: Be selective and strategic. Five for Creator Mode and a handful sprinkled tastefully elsewhere is all you need.
• Using Only Super-Broad Hashtags: If you only use tags like #Business, #Innovation, and #Management, you'll be competing with millions for attention. The Fix: Prioritize niche and specialized hashtags where you have a better chance of standing out and connecting with a relevant audience.
• Making Up Your Own Hashtags: Use existing community hashtags. A tag like #JanesAwesomeMarketingTips has zero followers and provides no search value. The Fix: Stick to established hashtags that people are actively following unless you have a widely recognized branded hashtag.
• Setting It and Forgetting It: Your career goals and expertise will evolve. The hashtags you chose two years ago might not reflect your focus today. The Fix: Revisit your profile hashtags every 3-6 months. Do a quick audit to make sure they still align with your personal brand and career direction.

Final Thoughts

Optimizing your LinkedIn profile with thoughtful hashtags in Creator Mode, your headline, and About section is a foundational step in building a strong professional brand. It positions you as an expert, makes you more discoverable in search, and helps you connect with the communities that matter most to your career.

Of course, a powerful profile is half of the equation, consistently posting valuable content is the other. Reinforcing your expertise requires a steady stream of content, and that’s where a good plan makes all the difference. At Postbase, we designed our visual calendar to help you effortlessly plan and schedule your posts around your core topics. Seeing your content strategy laid out makes it so much easier to stay consistent and build the authority your newly optimized profile deserves.