I love and agree with this whole article. All of it. Which is rare. Except for this, with which I respectfully disagree.

It's entirely unsupported and seems very much like opinion.

I agree 100% with your "Focus less on hashtags and more on your hook" assertion above. Solid, but let's consider a quick thought experiment.

Imagine that there are two LinkedIn Posts that are roughly equivalent in subject matter, quality, length, visuals, formatting, etc but that one has a well-considered set of relevant hashtags while the other does not.

Which article do you suppose will be found, seen, and hopefully read, etc by the largest and most appropriate audience(s)?

Yup

Hashtags are flat, organizational metadata used in many ways and by many important information systems to discover and direct content to interested consumers. Their use is certainly not mandatory, but they are hardly "old-fashioned".

Thanks again for sharing this otherwise excellent and dead-on article!