Take a look at the image below. What words would you use to describe it…beautiful, heavenly, breathtaking?
Source: Freepik
If we add the symbol # to all these words, we can use them as hashtags for social media posts. By now, we all know that hashtags are a combination of words, numbers, and phrases with a # symbol used to tag social media posts.
But how do these hashtags work and how do you create marketing hashtags to improve your presence on social media? The answer is free hashtag analytics. Many businesses may also use free hashtags generators to create flashy hashtags but they don’t know how to monitor their performance.
So, how do you check whether a hashtag has an impact?
Hashtag analysis allows you to do a complete overview of the performance of all the hashtags used on your social media platforms.
Now that you have an understanding of hashtag analytics, we will do a deep dive into their impact on social media campaigns.
Why Are Hashtag Analytics Important?
Source: Freepik
Hashtags are like magnets used on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media posts to attract your targeted audience. A hashtag acts, as the name suggests, as a tag to highlight a topic on social media. When a web crawler analyses a document or a social media post with this particular hashtag, it picks up the hashtag and drops it into the relevant category. It’s just like a mailman picking up letters from a mailbox and assorting them based on their destinations. Once this hashtag is identified, the posts or images reach your targeted audience.
Some hashtags get more views than others. That is why it is necessary to keep track of the progress of each hashtag. Take this image of a color analysis of the singer Dua Lipa on Instagram. Without any hashtags, you don’t know how this photograph reached your account. But when you scroll down a bit further, you will see the number of hashtags it took to help this picture reach your “For You Page” (FYP).
Source: styledbyfrancescacairns
You can see that the influencer used free hashtag analytics to improve the visibility of her post. The hashtags on this post include #ColourAnalysis #imageconsultant #deepwinter #deepautumn #softsummer #warmspring #coolsummer #brightwinter.
Benefits Of Hashtag Analytics
Hashtag analytics allows you to keep track of the performance of all types of hashtags you are using. It also tells you whether these hashtags are helping your posts reach the targeted audience. Some other perks of using free hashtag analytics are as follows:
- Increase Engagement
According to the latest numbers, Tweets with hashtags get 100% more engagement than tweets without them. Moreover, businesses can see 50% more engagement on their X (formerly Twitter) feeds when they use hashtags to promote their Tweets. Therefore, it’s evident that hashtag tracker tools increase the overall engagement of your content on social media.
- Explore Popular Trends
When you search for hashtags on free hashtag analytics tools, you can find out which hashtags are the most popular. By using these trending hashtags or putting your own spin on these hashtags, you can create a dynamic and ever-growing following on social media. By using free hashtag tracking, you can catch up with your competition and gauge the success of your campaigns as well.
- Find Your Niche
Hashtag analytics help you find your specific group of influencers or businessmen. It allows you to take a bird’s eye view of the competition around you and use that information to your advantage. For instance, if your brand sells personalized water bottles, you could search for hashtags relevant to the niche to find what your competition is up to, which influencers are the most active in this niche, and how to position yourself best in the market.
8 Best Hashtag Tracking Tools
Source: Freepik
Social media metrics include the number of likes, comments, shares, saves, and reposts of your original post on social media. It follows that free hashtag trackers for Instagram provide you with complete information on the success of your posts by giving you a full report. You can use these reports to get a complete overview of trending hashtags and check your progress while using these hashtags.
By identifying your mistakes and collecting all the data on successful metrics, you can create a thriving social media campaign. The best part about free hashtag analytics is that you can do all this tracking for free! Let us take a look at the top 8 hashtag analytic tools you can find on the internet today.
1. TalkWalker
Source: TalkWalker
As an analytical tool, Talkwalker is one of the unique options out there that help you track hashtags across multiple social media apps. Its free social search monitor tracks every social mention regarding your hashtag, including recording all the likes and comments on your posts. The free hashtag analytics option helps you discover trending topics, keep tabs on your competitors, and even measure brand sentiment. You can also tap into various influencer’s social media posts to find out the type of influencer you need to hire to grow your brand’s influence.
Let’s say you search for the hashtag #TheSelfieTalk with TalkWalker. As soon as you press enter, you will get a complete layout of hashtag statistics of Dove’s Selfietalk campaign on your screen. You will see the number of mentions, unique authors, consumer sentiments, and engagement on this particular hashtag. Then you can make an informed decision about whether you want to partake in this trend.
2. SproutSocial
Source: SproutSocial
Justyn Howard and his team at SproutSocial help companies and influencers track their performance on social media. It is a great tool to monitor hashtags on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Each of these social media platforms has an internal record of data in their settings. SproutSocial checks each set of data and compares it with the data of trending hashtags on the World Wide Web.
After comparing the two sets of data, SproutSocial shows you the performance of the hashtags you are using and whether you should continue using them. You can start a free trial for all of the packages SproutSocial has to offer. You don’t even need to put in any credit information. Simply take the app for a test drive to see whether it’s suitable for you!
3. RiteTag
Source: RiteTag
If you are more interested in growing your social media following on X (formerly Twitter) instead of Instagram, for example, then RiteTag is just for you. Saul, the CEO of RiteTag, was the first one to notice that the #jpquake was the only one getting a higher reach during the 2011 earthquake in Japan. By using the right hashtags, Saul was able to bring awareness to the public about said earthquake. Thereafter, he created RiteTag to help people find the right hashtags and use them properly.
By using this app, X users can check the number of unique tweets, hashtag exposure, and retweets on their posts. By checking the performance of each Tweet, X users can modify their marketing campaign by using hashtags that are trending and can get more likes, comments, and retweets.
4. BrandMentions
Source: BrandMentions
BrandMentions is another hashtag analytic tool that you can use to check the performance of various hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It provides you with a complete analysis of any hashtag in a matter of minutes. It also provides a full report of all the impressions of a single social media post. You can search all types of hashtags with this tool, for example, the best beauty hashtags, or if you are a fitness buff, you can use bodybuilding hashtags to improve your presence on social media.
Let’s say you search for the hashtag #AI-GeneratedContent on BrandMentions. As soon as you type it in the search bar, BrandMentions will start checking for keywords, mentions, and sentimental analysis of the hashtag. You can use the mentions to come up with exciting hashtags of your own and increase engagement.
5. Brand24
Source: Brand24
With almost 25 million online sources, Brand24 is another highly accurate free hashtag analytics application. By using a large number of filters, this application can track the efficiency of your hashtags on Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, TikTok, Quora, and Twitch. Most users feel that they can get enough information from the posts on Facebook and Instagram. However, social media applications like TikTok and Quora require in-depth research with hashtag analytics. Make sure you read each report thoroughly so you can create better hashtags for your posts.
If you are a small business and want to improve your presence with the best hashtag tracking tools, Brand24 can be a great asset for your venture. It will help you track the sentiments behind each mention and grow your audience within a short time.
6. Hootsuite Analytics
Source: Hootsuite
Analyzing the performance of your hashtags is easy, but if you want to improve the overall performance of your brand, you need to do a competitor analysis. Hootsuite Analytics provides you with trending hashtag breakdowns. Each hashtag’s performance is analyzed through the number of mentions, reposts, and shares on each platform so you can check the progress of your social media campaign. Moreover, these breakdowns take apart all the hashtags used by your competitors and analyze them one by one. It simplifies each trending hashtag by converting its complex elements into easy-to-understand metrics.
Now you can create a list of all the hashtags that are guaranteed to work for your social media campaign on Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram. You can include these social media hashtags to push your advertisements to more people and increase your posts’ engagement as well.
7. TweetBinder
Source: TweetBinder
X (formerly Twitter) is the place where everyone has the freedom to air their opinion. That is why X hashtags are more effective in conveying your message to the right audience. As soon as you post something, people will look at the hashtags and are likely to respond immediately. That’s where TweetBinder comes in! It is an app that helps you search and track relevant hashtags. You can search for hashtags, cash tags, accounts, and keywords by using TwitterBinder. By focusing on the analytical aspect of X hashtags, you have a better chance of increasing your posts’ engagement than doing separate hashtag analytics on multiple social media platforms.
The latest numbers show that X advertisements reach 5.8% of the world’s population aged 13 and above. You can tap into these numbers by using TweetBinder and build a massive Twitter following for your business.
8. Agorapulse
Source: Agorapulse
Another useful hashtag application is Agorapulse. It allows you to study your campaign’s hashtag performance in all the major social media applications, including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and LinkedIn. You do a complete overview of your Facebook campaign’s performance, carry out Instagram hashtag analytics, and use LinkedIn hashtag trackers to check your growth as a professional. By analyzing each hashtag’s performance overall in different social media apps, you can connect the dots between them.
For example, if you start a hashtag campaign for a baby milk formula by using #motherhood and #healthybaby, you are tapping into the emotional state of mothers. This sentimental approach can work well on all social media apps. It is especially advantageous with the best Instagram hashtags where mothers are usually scrolling for baby food ideas.
How to Choose the Best Hashtag Analytics Tool?
Source: Freepik
Hashtag analytics tools are designed to target specific categories when they are studying various social media campaigns. That’s because what works for Instagram may not work for Facebook. That is why you need to be extremely careful about how you use free hashtag analytics for various platforms and social media campaigns. The following tips will help you choose the best hashtag analytics tool for your campaign.
1. Identify your key metrics.
Does your social media campaign need more likes or shares? You can increase the engagement of your social media posts by using the right tools to boost your social media campaign. Hashtag analytics help you focus on the metrics you choose as having the most impact on your campaigns. If the number of shares helps your brand grow, you will see the numbers or graphs on your analytics report. Then you can come up with hashtags that compel people to share your posts and improve your brand’s visibility. By focusing on the most important metric, you will be able to drive traffic toward your account in no time.
2. Keep your budget in mind.
When you decide to buy a package for a hashtag analytic feature, make sure you are not spending more than you can recover. Analyse and compare all the prices mentioned in the pricing section of each tool. It will only take a few minutes to compare the prices of three or four of your favorite hashtag analytics tools. Once you do this research, you will be able to save your money and expand your business within a set budget.
3. Consider the size of your campaign.
The size of your social media campaign is crucial to the type of analytics tool you need to choose. If you simply want to analyze the progress of hashtags on a specific social media platform such as X, you can go for tools like TweetBinder. But if you want to promote a bigger campaign, you can use a more robust free hashtag analytics tool like BrandMentions.
4. Evaluate the tool’s features and USP.
Test drive each tool’s features to get an idea of what you are getting into. What is the tool’s unique selling proposition (USP)? Is it the tool’s ability to focus on a campaign’s progress, find trending titles, or create ad reports? Once you find the USP, you can choose the tool that will help you reach your social media marketing goals effectively.
Wrap Up
Hashtags are simple tools that help you organize your social media campaigns and boost your overall growth. However, it is necessary to get the best out of each hashtag you post on your brand’s internet profile. Once you learn how to navigate each hashtag analytics tool and find your comfort zone, you will see an immediate change in your social media presence.
If you feel that you cannot come up with snazzy hashtags by yourself, you can use our Free Hashtag Generator to create new ones. Soon, you will have a growing following on all your favorite social media apps and be a professional hashtag user!
I am a full-time online marketer, for over a decade now. Helped over 100,000+ people & generated well over $12M in online sales.