Hashtags are now used by every major social media platform. Although, the importance of hashtags differs on social media platforms. Some use hashtags excessively (Instagram) and then there are platforms (Facebook) where hashtags hardly matter for the users. However, one platform where hashtags mean a lot is Twitter. You just can’t imagine Twitter without hashtags. The introduction of hashtags analytics has enabled users to track, monitor, and analyze the performance metrics of hashtags in real-time.
An effective Twitter hashtag tracking tool can help monitor the performance of your hashtags. You can easily check how your content is performing and access insights that can help you understand what needs to be changed or improved to increase your brand’s social media presence. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a novice to social media marketing, you must track the performance of your hashtags in real-time.
In this post, we are going to discuss how to leverage hashtag analytics to increase your brand’s social media presence. But before we delve further into hashtag analytics, let’s brush up a little on the history of hashtags.
What is a hashtag?
If you are an avid Twitter user, you probably know what a hashtag is. Even though, for those unfamiliar with the term ‘hashtags’, using a (#) pound or hash symbol before a keyword or phrase (#justdoit) makes It a hashtag.
how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
— ⌗ChrisMessina (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
In the early days, social media platforms were facing a severe problem. User-generated content was abundant and there was no way to categorize it. This made it difficult for users to find relevant content. An early Twitter user, Chris Messina, suggested the use of hashtags to categorize the content.
Twitter has a long history of adopting features and ideas suggested by the community. Using the term ‘tweets’ instead of posts was suggested by the community and later adopted by Twitter. The use of hashtags was also a great idea suggested by a user. Hashtags helped users categorize content, users could also use specific hashtags to increase the reach and impressions of their tweets. This made hashtags an effective marketing tool to increase your brand’s social media authority.
Twitter Hashtags Best Practices
Hashtags are one of the most effective organic ways to increase your brand’s reach to connect with larger audience size. You can also use hashtags to target specific user groups. Let’s dive into some of the best hashtag marketing practices.
Track hashtag performance with TrackMyHashtag
The first step is to choose an effective Twitter hashtag tracking tool to monitor your hashtag performance metrics in real-time. You cannot create an effective hashtag marketing strategy without research. TrackMyHashtag is an effective Twitter hashtag and event tracking tool that can provide real-time performance metrics.
The tool can help you automate the analysis part, and provide useful statistics. These statistics can help you measure the impact of implemented strategies. You can analyze and identify effective strategies as well as the ones that don’t work. It will help you deploy effective marketing strategies and avoid making the same mistakes. Discover the most used hashtags and those generating the most engagement by starting your 5 days free trial today. You can also check out our blog on the Top 10 Twitter Analytics tool.
Perform thorough research
The next step is using the tool to extract insights and statistics. Analyzing your Twitter profile’s performance metrics can help you evaluate your social media presence. Depending on the insights you can define goals to achieve. The tools can also help you make data-driven marketing decisions to increase your brand’s social media authority.
Identify trending and popular hashtags
Hashtags are the most effective tools when it comes to increasing your brand’s reach organically. You just need to find the right hashtag to increase the SEO authority of your tweets.
A Twitter analytics tool can help you find the most trending and popular hashtags related to your industry. You can analyze the performance metrics and use the most relevant hashtags to reach a larger audience size.
Identify trending conversations
Tracking trending hashtags can also help you find popular discussions related to your brand. You can use these hashtags to enter into trending conversations to generate awareness about your brand. Taking part in these conversations can also help you get new followers and potential customers for your brand.
Track hashtag analytics and performance metrics
If you’re marketing your brand on Twitter, you must consistently track your content and hashtag performance metrics. It enables you to measure the impact of implemented strategies. Doing so can help you improvise your hashtag marketing strategies in real-time if the performance metrics are low.
Analyze your competitors
You should analyze your performance metrics, but don’t forget about your competitors. Using a third-party Twitter analytics tool, you can track and analyze the performance metrics of your competitors. It can help you analyze their social media and hashtag marketing strategies. You can also implement similar or improved Twitter marketing strategies to grow your brand.
How many hashtags to use?
The right number of hashtags to use differs on each platform. No worries, we’ll discuss the use of hashtags on each social media platform.
Twitter was the first social media platform to implemented the use of hashtags. It was primarily to categorize content, but soon brands and marketers realized the potential of hashtags as an effective marketing tool. Expert marketers and brands suggest using 1-2 hashtags, tweets using more than 2 hashtags draw 17% less engagement. Whereas tweets with 1-2 hashtags drive 21% more engagement. Also, tweets with a single hashtag are 55% more likely to be retweeted.
Instagram is another major social media platform that uses hashtags as a marketing tool. But the usage widely differs from Twitter. Instagram allows its users to add up to 30 hashtags in each post. Although, Instagram posts with 9 hashtags have proven to drive the most engagement.
LinkedIn is a popular professional networking platform that has recently adopted the use of hashtags. Although, they are not as prevalent as on Twitter or Instagram but play an important role in the conversations between the users. While typing a post, LinkedIn suggests relevant hashtags to use. Also, use no more than 5 hashtags or the platform algorithm will mark it as spam.
Facebook is a social media giant with the largest number of daily active users when compared to other platforms. Facebook also allows the users to post content with hashtags, however, they don’t seem to make a difference in terms of content performance. To be precise, posts with a hashtag tend to perform worse than posts without a hashtag.
Pinterest has also adopted the use of hashtags, but similar to Facebook, they do not play a major role in increasing your social media presence. Also, you can only add hashtags in the description, but the lack of a hashtag monitoring system makes it difficult to use hashtags effectively.
How to track hashtag performance metrics?
Hashtags are one of the most effective ways of increasing your social media reach organically. Although to maximize success, you need to track hashtag performance metrics in real-time. To do so, you need an effective tool that can provide a comprehensive analysis of any hashtag in real-time. There are various tools out there that can help you increase your brand’s social media presence. One such tool is TrackMyHashtag.
TrackMyHashtag
TrackMyHashtag is an AI-enabled Twitter hashtag analytics tool. It can track any event, hashtag, or keyword related to your brand or industry. Its real-time monitoring capabilities can provide instant updates on the performance metrics. It can also help you analyze your past tweets to identify engaging content that users like to engage with the most. Apart from content, it can provide you with the latest trending hashtag related to your industry. Hashtag analytics can also help you find the trending conversations related to your brand or industry.
Key features of TrackMyHashtag,
- Track and monitor hashtag performance in real-time
- Track hashtag campaigns and events
- Track trending and popular hashtags
- Identify key influencers
- Track competitor’s hashtag
- Fetch Tweets data for past years
The real-time performance metrics enable you to improvise your hashtag marketing strategies in real-time. The precise analytical insights will help you make data-driven decisions to grow your brand. You can see a sample of the Hashtag Analytics dashboard here: Twitter analytics
The basic monthly plan starts at $49 a month.
Important Hashtag Analytics Metrics
There are a lot of metrics associated with hashtag analytics. It can be difficult for a new marketer to decide which social media metrics to track. Here are some of the most important hashtag analytics metrics that you should track.
Popularity
Is the hashtag you are using popular? If so, how popular is the hashtag? Marketers and social media managers tend to use only those hashtags that have a high search volume. The higher the search volume, the better engagement and reach for your tweets. So, it’s a good idea to use popular or trending hashtags that are more searched by the users.
However, don’t just use any hashtag with your tweets just because it’s more searchable. Using unrelated trending hashtags with your tweets can be considered as spamming or worse a rookie mistake. It can drive users away from your Twitter profile and tarnish your brand’s reputation. If you don’t believe me just ask Habitat UK.
Reach and Impressions
Another metric that you should look at is reach and impressions. While popularity is perceived based on how searchable a hashtag is, reach provides insights about the number of times a hashtag has appeared in the users’ timelines. On the other hand, impressions are the number of users that have seen the hashtag. These metrics together can help you further narrow down the list of hashtags created based on popularity.
Engagement
This metric is considered the most important metric by brands and marketers. In the case of hashtags, it displays the number of times users have used or interacted with a hashtag. You must analyze the engagement statistics for each hashtag. It will help you find the hashtags that drive the most engagement.
Users
Now that you have the best options for your hashtag marketing strategy it’s time to decide which hashtag to use. Analyzing and identifying the kind of users that use the hashtag can help you make the final decision. If the hashtag is widely used by your target audience, then you should definitely use the hashtag. But if the hashtag has low engagement or popularity among your audience, you should explore other options for your hashtag marketing strategy.
Types of Hashtags you should be tracking
Ok, now that you know how to find the right hashtags, let’s look at the kind of hashtags you should track. Let’s begin,
Branded Hashtags
Reclaiming the past to empower the future.
This year’s #BETRUE collection breaks symbolic boundaries.
Learn More: https://t.co/AgiTrZb35I #nike pic.twitter.com/aXzMVcFx2k
— Nike (@Nike) May 24, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
A branded hashtag is usually created to represent the brand. It is often used to promote or tag your brand directly in the tweets. A branded hashtag is a hashtag that can be easily related to your brand. In many cases, brands simply use their company names for a hashtag. Some brands might also add a keyword to their company name to create a branded hashtag.
Tracking branded hashtags can also help you find how many users are talking about your brand. It can also help you find popular conversations related to your brand. Tracking branded hashtags can also help you find customer complaints and issues, which gives you a chance to retain those customers.
Trending Hashtags
Trending hashtags are hashtags that have the highest engagement statistics at the moment. You can easily find trending hashtags by checking the ‘What’s happening’ section on the Twitter desktop site. If you are more of a Twitter smartphone app user, just open the app-click on the magnifying glass icon-then click on trending. You can now see the top trending hashtags.
Using trending hashtags can help you generate brand awareness and increase your social media presence. Using a touch of humor along with a humanized brand voice can also get your tweets viral and propel your brand to the next level. Using trending hashtags, you can start conversations related to your brand.
Although, don’t just use any hashtag to promote your content. Make sure that the trending hashtag matches your brand’s voice.
Event & Campaign Hashtags
Add this @CocaCola Bottle Cap Pop! to your collection today! https://t.co/BAjw11IenJ #Funko #FunkoPop #ShareACoke pic.twitter.com/2XOJPfrdfs
— Funko (@OriginalFunko) January 8, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Just as the name suggests, these are hashtags created specifically for an event or a social media campaign. It helps brands generate awareness and promote their events before they begin. Users can also use the hashtag to share their experiences related to the event with the event hashtags. This further helps the brand increase the reach and impact of your event or social media campaigns along with engagement.
Monitoring these hashtags can help you analyze the impact of your implemented strategies. You can easily analyze the performance metrics of your Twitter hashtag campaigns in real-time with an event and hashtag tracking tool. It will help you improvise your marketing approaches in real-time if the performance indicators are lower than expected.
Content Hashtags
Content hashtags are basically keywords, that are used to classify your content. For example, if you are tweeting about influencer marketing, you can use #influencermarketing instead in your tweet. It will help classify your tweet to the influencer marketing category and thus increase the SEO authority of your tweets.
You want to track the engagement metrics on these hashtags, as it can help you find the hashtags that are more searchable and drive engagement. Using the right hashtags can help you reach a much broader audience and increase your brand’s social media presence.
Niche Hashtags
Friend of Barbour, @SugSean, has shown us how he is styling his Barbour Quilted Lutz Waxed Jacket this #BarbourChristmas with his favourite four-legged pup. Discover our Christmas story: https://t.co/TchD1kGlL9 pic.twitter.com/i0D61HpZmb
— barbour (@Barbour) December 20, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Niche hashtags are hashtags that are often used in niche communities either by the niche influencers or the users in the community. These hashtags are only popular among niche communities. Although, these niche communities provide a much more focused audience group that share the same interests. Using niche hashtags can help you target these users. You can get much better engagement and conversion rates from these communities. You can also leverage niche influencers to connect with the communities.
Influencer Hashtags
This one’s a no-brainer! These are hashtags often used by influencers to promote their content on Twitter or any other social media platform. Brands must track the hashtags used by known and respected influencers in the industry. It can help you find content hashtags that can help you boost the engagement statistics of your tweets.
Benefits of Hashtag Analytics
Here are ways you can benefit from hashtag analytics
Optimize content strategy
Analyzing hashtags can enhance your content strategy. It can help you find the most searchable and popular hashtags in the industry to get more eyes on your content. Furthermore, analyzing the popular hashtags can also help you identify resonating content topics to increase engagement.
Know what users talk about you
Just about everything these days gets its own hashtag. Your brand’s hashtag can be tracked via hashtag analysis. You may utilize this to have a better understanding of what people think about your brands by analyzing their tweets.
Enhancing customer service is one method to make use of this. You may monitor and improve your response time to customers who have had negative encounters with your business. Identifying and resolving customer issues promptly will help you retain them. A brand image assessment or content or product/service feedback can also be obtained.
Monitor your marketing campaigns
Despite the widespread usage of hashtags, not all brands track their results. As a result, they have no idea how well they are doing. Monitoring social media campaigns is an excellent illustration of this. You can monitor the success of your social media efforts in real-time using hashtag analysis. You can quickly adjust your tactics if the results aren’t what you expected.
Find industry influencers
The use of hashtags and keywords in your analysis of tweets relating to your industry is made possible by hashtag analysis. You can use it to identify individuals in your industry who have the power to influence customers’ purchasing decisions. You can identify the suitable influencers to collaborate with by further examining their profiles.
Monitor competitors
You can keep tabs on your competition’s social media activity by using hashtag analytics. You may find out what kind of material your competitors are posting by tracking their hashtags. Using this method, you’ll be able to come up with new social media content ideas. In addition, you’ll be able to put into action tried-and-true tactics for expanding your brand while avoiding the blunders of your competitors.
Wrapping Up
Now that you know what hashtag analytics is and the tools to analyze and track hashtags, start tracking hashtags. It can help you can find the ones that can expand your brand’s social media horizons. You can also use hashtag analytics to track and dissect the social media strategies of your competitors. Use the best practices and tools to plan an effective hashtag marketing strategy that can scale your brand to the next level.
Stay tuned for further updates. Adios!
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