Transforming content marketing in 2024 requires effective tools, and a strong research tool can significantly improve results. Hashtags are essential in social media marketing, especially on platforms like Twitter, where they boost engagement, organize posts, and attract followers. Most importantly, they help connect with target audiences, as data shows that posts with one or more hashtags achieve higher engagement than those without.
Hashtags are central to joining social conversations on platforms like X, Instagram, and Pinterest. For brands, they help build awareness, connect with audiences, and facilitate conversations around products. They also support community building and encourage user-generated content. Using a reliable hashtag research tool is crucial to achieving these results.
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Understanding Hashtag Analytics
Hashtag analytics provide data on how specific tags perform across social media. This analysis includes both branded and general options, helping assess their impact on the visibility and success of social posts. For instance, you may find that posts with certain tags perform better on one platform than another, or that the number of hashtags used impacts engagement. Additionally, the specific choices and their relevance to your content can affect discoverability. Hashtag tracking tools gather this information, allowing you to plan, refine, and test your hashtag strategy effectively.
Why Hashtag Analytics Matter
Hashtag analytics offer crucial data to refine your social media strategy and make more informed choices. Analyzing hashtag performance enables you to adjust your approach, boost engagement, and strengthen your social listening efforts, ensuring campaigns are better aligned with audience interests.
These insights allow you to:
- Identify the most impactful hashtags for campaigns and track post effectiveness;
- Uncover terms that your audience actively engages with, enabling participation in relevant conversations on platforms like Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and TikTok;
- Recognize trending topics and content that resonate with your followers, helping shape posts that match their interests;
- Track hashtag activity in real time, capturing emerging trends and engagement opportunities as they appear;
- Pinpoint key platforms where discussions around these terms are most active, allowing you to focus on high-impact channels for your brand.
Incorporating hashtag analytics into your strategy enables data-driven adjustments that enhance campaign performance and build stronger connections with your audience across social media platforms.
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Tools for Effective Hashtag Research
Explore tools that can take your marketing campaigns to the next level. Here’s a look at effective hashtag research tools to help boost your growth on X.
Twilert
Twilert is a comprehensive Twitter search and tracking tool, perfect for monitoring hashtags, keywords, and conversations in real time. Built to support marketers, it includes:
- Advanced Search: Use Boolean operators to include/exclude keywords and filter tweets by location or language for highly relevant results;
- Scheduled Alerts: Receive real-time or periodic email digests on specific hashtags to stay updated on trends and new opportunities;
- Search History: Save and revisit key tweets, useful for tracking hashtag performance and refining strategies over time;
- Geo-Targeting: Reach a precise audience by setting location-based filters, ideal for local campaigns;
- Multi-User Access: Supports multiple users, making it easy for teams to manage multiple brand accounts;
- White-Labeling: Offers branded tracking services for agencies, allowing them to provide custom reports for clients.
For brands and agencies needing strong research and tracking capabilities on X, Twilert offers essential tools to boost social listening, refine selection, and support data-informed marketing decisions.
Twitter Advanced Search
X’s Advanced Search is a free and versatile tool for researching hashtags. This built-in feature allows you to search for relevant ones within your industry and offers various filters to help you effectively narrow down results. You can filter tweets by specific words or phrases, and refine the results by location, language, and even date range. These options are especially useful for tracking seasonal trends or monitoring specific campaign periods.
Twitter Advanced Search also allows users to search based on accounts, mentions, and engagement levels, making it easier to find popular posts and high-engagement content related to specific hashtags. This feature is valuable for both small businesses and larger brands looking to understand which hashtags are trending and how they perform within their niche. Although it lacks some advanced analytics, X Advanced Search is a practical starting point for gathering hashtag insights and refining your social media strategy.
Talkwalker
Talkwalker’s Free Social Search is a comprehensive analytics tool that monitors mentions across a wide range of platforms, including social media networks, news websites, forums, and podcasts. Supporting 186 languages, it provides essential metrics such as engagement rates, sentiment analysis, reach, and trending activities. Users can track the performance of hashtags over the past week, explore related topics, and identify key influencers discussing specific terms—features that are invaluable for generating content ideas and finding collaboration opportunities.
The tool allows for the comparison of up to four hashtags at once, with filters available to fine-tune results according to specific strategic goals. Additional insights include demographic information like age, gender, and interests, as well as the geographical distribution of mentions. For precise targeting, Talkwalker offers Boolean search operators like “AND” and “OR,” enabling users to create customized searches tailored to their unique campaign needs.
Hootsuite Streams
Hootsuite Streams is an efficient tool for tracking and social listening, allowing users to create streams to monitor recent and trending hashtags. This feature helps users stay informed on popular posts and conversations within specific topics.
This feature helps keep your brand connected to industry discussions while providing the opportunity to analyze posts within each stream. By doing so, you can identify related hashtags worth testing in your content, ensuring you stay informed of new and relevant trends in your niche.
Panoramiq Watch
Panoramiq Watch is an Instagram-focused tracking tool that enables users to conduct complex searches with up to three hashtags at once. It also allows you to exclude specific hashtags from searches and save targeted queries related to competitors or preferred topics for easy access. The tool integrates with Hootsuite, letting you save content to platforms like Streamnotes, Evernote, OneNote, and Pocket for further research.
Panoramiq Watch also includes an analytics feature to check how often a hashtag is used, making it easy to track trends and manage activity through the Hootsuite dashboard.
Engage AI
Engage AI offers LinkedIn-focused automation and personalization tools for social selling, with a notable emphasis on tracking hashtag performance and trends. The platform’s free tools include three LinkedIn widgets that can be embedded on a website, displaying valuable insights such as the top 50 most-followed hashtags, the top 10 most-searched, and those with the largest weekly growth. Additionally, these widgets allow users to monitor trend evolution over time, supporting continuous analysis and adjustments.
Additionally, Engage AI offers a Chrome extension for analytics on LinkedIn. This extension allows you to research any LinkedIn hashtag, showing follower count and potential engagement metrics like likes and comments. It can also integrate with Hootsuite, providing convenient access to LinkedIn data and helping refine your social strategy with up-to-date insights.
StarNgage
StarNgage provides a complimentary Instagram search and tracking tool, tailored for marketers aiming to enhance social media influencer campaigns. This tool delivers in-depth analytics, allowing users to analyze hashtag trends, monitor engagement, and locate profiles utilizing specific tags.
With StarNgage, brands can uncover prominent influencers who post under chosen hashtags, offering opportunities for collaboration. The tool also recommends additional hashtags to widen the search scope, accompanied by performance metrics for each related tag.
Main Features:
- Real-time hashtag analytics for Instagram, including insights on posts and videos;
- Influencer identification based on hashtag activity;
- Related hashtag recommendations to broaden search possibilities;
- Reports showcasing leading brands and posts associated with the hashtag.
Hashtag Tracker by BrandMentions
BrandMentions provides a free tracking tool with detailed analytics across multiple social media platforms. Users can monitor performance in real-time, gathering insights from social media, news sites, forums, and other online sources.
By entering a hashtag, users receive a comprehensive report on its usage and impact. BrandMentions also highlights top influencers by voice share and compiles posts mentioning the term, helping gauge reach and influence.
Key Features:
- Real-time monitoring across various platforms;
- In-depth metrics, including mentions, reach, interactions, and sentiment analysis;
- Word cloud visualization of trending conversations;
- Platform-specific breakdown (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.);
- Insights on top influencers and websites using the term.
Inflact Hashtag Generator
Inflact offers a free generator tailored for Instagram, designed to boost post visibility with targeted tag suggestions. Users simply enter a keyword, and the tool generates a list of hashtags categorized by frequency and ranking difficulty.
The suggestions from Inflact aim to improve content reach, with additional details on each tag, such as difficulty level and daily usage stats.
Key Features:
- Tag generation based on keyword, photo, or post URL;
- Frequency categorization (Frequent, Average, Rare);
- Difficulty rating for each tag (Easy, Medium, Hard);
- Related organic tags suggested by Instagram;
- Suggestions of similar tags with related keywords.
RiteTag
RiteTag is a free tool offering instant hashtag suggestions for images and text across multiple social media platforms. Using real-time engagement data, it provides recommendations to improve visibility on Instagram, Twitter, and others.
RiteTag includes platform-specific suggestions and options for long-term visibility, along with performance analytics to help users select the most effective tags for their campaigns.
Key Features:
- Hashtag suggestions for both text and images;
- Real-time engagement data for optimal hashtag selection;
- Performance analytics, covering unique tweets, exposure, and retweets;
- Compatibility with multiple social media platforms;
- Browser extension for easy, quick access.
Taggbox
Taggbox is a powerful platform designed to gather and utilize user-generated content (UGC) from social media campaigns across multiple platforms. Offering a 14-day free trial, Taggbox allows users to explore its full range of features without commitment.
The platform automates content collection from campaigns, enabling brands to enhance community engagement. It provides tools for aggregating, moderating, and publishing UGC across various marketing channels. Its rights management feature ensures content permissions from creators, and performance analytics facilitate comprehensive campaign tracking and assessment.
Key Features:
- Automated aggregation of campaign content;
- UGC moderation capabilities;
- Rights management to secure user permissions;
- Performance analytics, including sentiment tracking;
- Customizable options for displaying UGC.
TweetBinder
TweetBinder provides a free analytics tool for X, delivering quick insights into hashtag performance by allowing users to analyze up to 200 tweets from the last 7 days. This tool tracks metrics for hashtags, accounts, and keywords on X, presenting data in clear reports that show engagement and reach. Additionally, TweetBinder includes contributor rankings and sentiment analysis, helping users identify key influencers driving conversations around specific topics.
Key Features:
- Analysis of up to 200 recent X posts;
- Basic sentiment tracking;
- Contributor rankings and detailed statistics;
- Economic value estimation;
- Engagement and reach metrics.
Hashtagify
Hashtagify is a valuable tool for enhancing marketing efforts on both Twitter and Instagram. It generates a list of the top ten hashtags tailored to your brand or event, with a detailed report on how they can boost engagement on X. With a frequently updated library of trending options, this tool helps your social media team choose the most relevant and effective hashtags for your brand.
Key Hashtag Metrics to Track
To make the most of your hashtag strategy, it’s essential to understand several key metrics. Tracking these metrics allows you to refine your approach, connect with the right audiences, and measure campaign effectiveness.
One key metric to track is trending hashtags, which highlights popular, currently active topics. If a trending hashtag is relevant to your brand, using it can boost visibility; however, it’s crucial to choose trends that truly align with your content. Another useful metric is post volume, which indicates how widely a topic is being discussed.
The number of followers for a hashtag shows the community’s interest size, often suggesting that a larger following may bring in an engaged audience. Additionally, frequency reveals how often a hashtag is used. It’s wise to avoid overly common hashtags that lack specificity and rarely used ones with low reach. Identifying the right usage frequency for your brand helps improve overall reach.
Reach is another useful metric, showing how many people actually see posts with a given hashtag and providing insight into its visibility. Similarly, engagement measures likes, comments, and shares, indicating how people respond. Tags with higher engagement are often more valuable for building connections.
Tracking top posts for a specific hashtag helps identify popular content and active influencers, providing insights into what resonates with the audience. For branded hashtags, sentiment analysis is particularly useful, as it reveals how users feel about your brand or campaign. This can help refine your approach and respond to audience reactions effectively.
A post by TheXpeditor announcing Apple’s M4 MacBook Pro used branded hashtags like #apple and #appleevent, generating high engagement. Tracking such posts helps brands see what content resonates and gauge sentiment around announcements, aiding in strategy refinement and future content alignment.
Finally, understanding hashtag demographics provides insight into the characteristics of users engaging with your posts. This information helps you target your audience more precisely, leading to more impactful campaigns.
By monitoring these hashtag metrics, you can make informed adjustments to your social media strategy, enhancing campaign effectiveness and engagement.
Final Thoughts
Research tools are essential for building a successful social media strategy in 2024. By using these tools, marketers can identify relevant and trending hashtags, track engagement, and gain insights into audience behavior. With the right strategy, brands can increase visibility, drive engagement, and connect more effectively with target audiences across platforms like Twitter and Instagram. Monitoring key metrics and using tools like Hootsuite, Twilert, and Hashtagify enables brands to make data-driven adjustments that enhance campaign performance and build community connections.