A method for recommending hashtags includes determining keywords from a post planned for publishing by a publisher. An input criteria comprising at least one of age group, geographical location, date range, or a keyword is received. Previous posts associated with the keywords and satisfying the input criteria are obtained. The previous posts are categorized into one or more categories based on sentiment of each post and for each category hashtags used in the obtained previous posts in that category are determined. The hashtags are ranked based on predefined criteria comprising at least one of frequency of appearance of respective hashtag in posts, number of likes or shares or retweets of post comprising respective hashtag, number of followers of person who used respective hashtag, or sentiment of post comprising respective hashtag. The hashtags are then recommended, based on ranking, to the publisher for use with the post planned for publishing.