Save Writing Hashtags. Let An AI App Take Care Of That For You.

Tired of thinking up and writing hashtags for your latest social media posts? It gets tiresome. Want a better, faster, more concise way to add hashtags without the fuss?

Let’s face it. Everything about writing, editing, promoting and marketing a book takes time. Even a simple social media post requires the same kind of attention that’s applied to a manuscript.

You’ve taken a photograph, adjusted it, cropped it, written a caption and checked the spelling. It’s ready to go. All that remains is to add a collection of suitable hashtags so the right people have a chance of finding it.

Easy, right?

Not always.

After writing the post, the caption and everything else connected to it, my enthusiasm usually collapses somewhere around the third hashtag. I’ve already done the creative work. Now I’m expected to reduce it to a stack of labels.

That’s when an AI hashtag generator begins to look rather attractive.

Let the AI Look at the Picture

I first discovered this kind of software through a phone app that could scan an image and suggest hashtags based on what it saw. Image-aware AI apps, including ChatGPT and various dedicated hashtag generators, can now do the same thing.

Show one of them a photograph, and it identifies the visible ingredients.

A beach becomes #beach, #ocean, #sunset and #travel.

A writing desk becomes #writer, #writinglife, #author and #books.

A photograph of a woman standing beneath a streetlight might produce #woman, #night, #city and #portrait.

It does all of that in seconds.

That’s useful for someone like me. I’ve been writing a blog post every day, and every post comes with its own small collection of secondary jobs. There are images to prepare, excerpts to write, links to insert and promotional pieces to arrange. Hashtags are just another set of crumbs left on the bench after the real meal has been made.

If an app can clean those up, I’m happy to let it try.

I Put the Hashtag Generator to Work

Initially, I suspected it had been trained to recognise little more than activewear, gym bodies, bikini girls, coffee cups and plates of food photographed from directly above.

Social media has plenty of those.

So, I gave the app something less obvious: a silhouette.

It recognised it.

Nice.

Then I tried people, activities, buildings, animals and less conventional photographs. It did surprisingly well. It often produced tags I wouldn’t have considered, which is the real benefit. AI doesn’t get tired, lose interest or reach the third hashtag and decide that #ThatWillDo is perfectly acceptable.

For authors, the possibilities are obvious. It can examine book covers, character artwork, writing desks, launch graphics, quotation cards and the locations used in a story. A photograph taken for one purpose might contain several useful subjects the photographer has overlooked.

That doesn’t mean the app understands the post.

It only means it can see what’s in the picture.

There’s a difference.

A Picture Isn’t the Whole Story

Suppose I upload an image of a lone woman standing on a beach at night. The AI might suggest:

#beach #woman #ocean #night #moonlight #photography

Technically, it is correct.

But what if the post is about psychological manipulation, abandonment or a character waiting for someone who has no intention of returning?

The software has identified the objects. It hasn’t understood the mood, purpose or subtext. It doesn’t know whether she is lonely, dangerous, heartbroken or waiting to push someone into the water.

That part still belongs to the writer.

The same distinction applies throughout my stories and thoughts on storytelling. An image may show the surface of a scene, but fiction lives underneath it. AI can recognise a camera, a storm and a man standing in the dark. It cannot automatically understand what those things mean when they appear together.

Not unless I tell it.

A better prompt would explain that the image promotes a dark psychological novel involving obsession, troubled relationships and murder. With that information, the AI can move beyond describing objects and begin suggesting tags that match the intended audience.

That makes it more useful—but it still doesn’t make it trustworthy.

Where AI Hashtag Generators Get It Wrong

These apps have drawbacks.

1. Some insert their own promotional hashtag into the set.
2. Most require an Internet connection.
3. They occasionally misidentify objects.
4. They may favour American spelling.
5. They can suggest popular but irrelevant tags.
6. They often produce far more hashtags than anyone needs.
7. Some repeat slight variations of the same idea to make the list look more impressive.

Fortunately, deleting mistakes and adding missing tags is easy. The danger comes when someone copies the entire rack without reading it.

That’s not automation. That’s surrender.

A hashtag generator should provide possibilities, not make the final decision. If it adds #romance to a post about a collapsing marriage, it may attract exactly the wrong reader. If it mistakes dark fiction for horror, the audience could be disappointed before they reach the second paragraph.

Relevance matters more than quantity.

Instagram still allows users to search for hashtags, but discovery is no longer driven by hashtags alone. Its search system also considers keywords, accounts, locations and the wider meaning of the content. A clear caption is therefore more useful than fifty vague labels stapled underneath it.

The best approach is to use a small, deliberate mixture:

• broad tags that describe the subject;
• specific tags that identify the niche;
• audience tags that reflect the intended reader;
• one or two personal or branded tags, when appropriate.

Avoid stuffing the post with every suggestion the machine produces. The goal isn’t to reach everyone. It’s to reach people who might care.

That principle applies to promoting novels through online channels generally. Authors already have enough trouble finding readers without inviting uninterested strangers into their space.

AI Can Save Time—But It Can’t Replace Judgement

Think of the things you’ll be able to do instead of thinking up hashtags!

But be warned.

If you’re not paying attention, it will get things wrong.

And don’t forget, there’s still an uncomfortable amount of non-fiction writing attached to creating fiction. Once the novel is finished, an author still has descriptions, website posts, captions, newsletters and promotional material to produce. Balancing creativity with promotion becomes part of the job, whether we enjoy it or not.

A hashtag generator can remove one small irritation from that process.

Let it scan the image. Let it make suggestions. Let it find the words you overlooked.

Then read every one of them.

AI is quick, tireless and occasionally clever. It can look at your photograph and tell you what it contains.

What it cannot always tell is who should see it—or what might happen when the wrong person does.

There you go. All done.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)

It analyses an image and generates tags you and I would normally overlook, and it does it in seconds!