When it comes to your visitor'southward social media marketing, hashtags are pretty much an essential role of your content strategy. These useful little links create the perfect method for finding relevant content to share, giving your audience an piece of cake manner to observe your content, and grouping together similar conversations.

If y'all've ever been on Twitter or Instagram, you've more than likely seen hashtags in use before. You've likely used hashtags on these platforms (and maybe more!) yourself.

Whether yous're a seasoned skilful when it comes to hashtags or brand new to social marketing, there's one affair that's certain: you must be able to track your hashtags. Knowing which hashtags are pop, bulldoze people to discover your content and get them talking is essential to your social strategy.

What is a hashtag?

The first hashtag ever was used on August 23, 2007, by a Twitter user named Chris Messina as a means to differentiate betwixt groups of topics within tweets.

Twitter has a long history of adopting user recommendations onto their platform. For example, it was early users who referred to posts on Twitter every bit "Tweets" and who created @replies and retweets. And the platform just recently added the thread characteristic as an easy fashion for people to create stories via tweet.

So it wasn't long until hashtags made their way onto the platform as an official feature. And to say they spread similar wildfire would be an understatement.

Hashtags are now commonplace within social media, with platforms similar Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn eventually implementing the searchable feature as well. Now, hundreds of thousands of posts using hashtags are shared on social media daily.

Hashtag best practices

Since hashtags are and then mutual, they can exist used in many different ways and on many different platforms. Strategies tin range from using your own branded hashtag to encourage your audience to share user-generated content or jumping on trending hashtags to create popular content.

Using hashtags isn't a difficult or advanced role of your strategy. Bank check out these tips for incorporating hashtags into your social media posts.

Rails hashtag performance with Sprout

From finding the near relevant hashtags to your brand to tracking post performance, Sprout can help y'all finer analyze your strategy.

Use Sprout's Instagram Outbound Hashtag Functioning to notice out what topics and posts are resonating with your audience.

Observe your about used hashtags and those generating the almost date by starting your free trial today.

Tools to track the the best hashtags

Finding the best hashtags to use inside your social media content is first priority. It'southward non just a guessing game, although some strategic A/B testing is always a skillful idea. Each platform has a search bar for you to browse possible hashtags for your content, but those search features don't ever give you an thought of how popular the hashtag is.

Using a tool like RiteTag is perfect for gauging interest in hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. You tin can search for an industry hashtag (for case, #socialmedia) to see how pop it is, and compare it to top related hashtags.

For hashtags on Twitter, RiteTag provides a list of other relevant hashtags, how many tweets employ that hashtag per hour, how many retweets that hashtag receives per 60 minutes, and how many people are seeing that hashtag per hour.  These lists are color coded, with green indicating hashtags that are hot right at present, blue for those with lower immediate popularity but a longer lifespan, red for overused hashtags and gray for underused hashtags that are all-time to avoid.

RiteTag screenshot recommending hashtags for Twitter

Although this information is exclusively for Twitter, RiteTag too provides insight into Instagram hashtags based on your search. The information provided isn't almost as in-depth, but information technology can still give you a dandy idea of which hashtags to use within your Instagram mail.

RiteTag screenshot showing popular Instagram hashtags to use

You can also check out how many people are using hashtags on Instagram by typing information technology into the search bar and tapping the Tags department. Click on each tag to meet how many posts are using that hashtag, if anyone you follow is using that hashtag, every bit well as related popular hashtags.

Screenshot of tag search on Instagram

At that place are also multiple ways to utilize Sprout Social to find and review the performance of your hashtags. You can employ Sprout Listening to find out how oft people are talking almost your topic, what related terms they're using and what the sentiment effectually the topic is.

Listening Word Cloud Report from Sprout

How many hashtags should you use?

The number of hashtags you employ depends on which platform you're posting to. A hashtag strategy is not i-size-fits-all when it comes to the various social media networks. In fact, on some platforms, information technology's meliorate not to use hashtags in your posts.

Facebook – one-2 hashtags

Using hashtags on Facebook can assistance your content gain visibility, attract new community members for your brand and increase your reach overall. The all-time arroyo to hashtags on Facebook is to be specific and select i-ii hashtags that are truly relevant to the content of your postal service. When Facebook users peruse a hashtag feed rather than their private newsfeed, they are looking to discover and engage with trending discussions—which is a great fourth dimension for your brand to be front and center.

Twitter: 1-ii hashtags

Using up to two hashtags within your tweets can really double your engagement. We'll talk about dissimilar types of hashtags to use (and track) here in a bit, only proceed this in mind every fourth dimension y'all're about to tweet. However, using more than two hashtags can actually decrease date, so maximize your hashtag use at simply one or two.

Instagram: Upwards to 30 hashtags

Instagram posts allow you to share upwardly to 30 hashtags, and in gild to maximize accomplish and engagement, it's actually recommended to apply up every bit many of those xxx as y'all can. This is why Sprout Social's Instagram Business Profiles Report is then helpful—information technology shows your outbound hashtag usage during the reporting period and which of the hashtags you lot've used resulted in the most engagement.

Pinterest: 0 hashtags

Pinterest made a big proclamation in 2018 about how they were bringing hashtag capabilities to its platform, and as of now, there isn't enough data to decide if pins that include hashtags perform better than pins without. Still, this platform is similar to Facebook in that its search characteristic doesn't differentiate when searching for hashtags or keywords. We recommend simply including your keywords within the description, rather than inside a hashtag.

LinkedIn: 2-iii hashtags

LinkedIn has also but recently added hashtags to their platform, only unlike Pinterest, they take done so while also creating a searching method that does focus on hashtags. Which means including up to iii hashtags in your company's LinkedIn post actually can help people to observe your content better. Although there's no limit to how many hashtags you tin include inside your post, we recommend keeping it betwixt two and iii.

How to rail popular hashtags

This guide details everything you lot demand to know near Twitter analytics, or encounter here to help find Twitter analytics tools.

When you use hashtags, you're increasing achieve and engagement on your social media content. Hashtags are ane of the virtually powerful organic social media strategies, merely in guild to maximize their performance, you demand to runway your hashtags.

Many brands struggle to place which social media metrics are near important for their campaigns, and this can also exist true of hashtags. With Sprout Social'due south trends report, it's incredibly easy to meet which hashtags your audience is using, how they're performing and what other topics they're mentioned with. This lets you build your content strategy around what your audience is most interested in, rather than just latching on to hashtags that are widely popular but have lilliputian relevance to your make or audition.

Twitter trends report

Adding those keywords and hashtags into your own tweets can aid generate more than appointment and buzz effectually your make online. Click here to bank check out a sample Trends Study.

Important hashtag metrics to track

What should you actually look for when knowing a hashtag is working for your social strategy? Here are a few height metrics that tin assist you determine the success of a hashtag.

Popularity

How pop is the hashtag that y'all're using? Hashtags that are used often tend to besides exist searched for oft, and then it'south a proficient idea to include hashtags in your post that have proven to exist popular. You merely want to make sure you're non spamming your followers with irrelevant but trending hashtags just for popularity's sake.

Achieve

How many people actually tend to come across the hashtags you're using? If your reach isn't very loftier, yous're probably non using the best hashtags. Endeavour out some new tactics to see if y'all can increase the eyes on your posts, such as using a tool like Sprout to notice related hashtags that are getting a lot of attending.

Interactions

Not but do you want to make sure people are using and seeing these hashtags, you lot want to make sure people are as well interacting with them. Posting hashtagged content that gets users Retweeting and sharing will expand the accomplish of your campaign.

Users

Who, specifically, is using the hashtags? You lot desire to make sure that you're seeing users that are inside your target audience using and searching for the same hashtags that you are and so your message resonates.

Which hashtags to track

There are several unlike types of hashtags that y'all'll be using in your social media content. Here's know how and why to track each ane.

Content hashtags

Content hashtags are essentially the keyword hashtags that you tag at the finish or inside of your post. Going dorsum to the example we used in this commodity when searching for relevant hashtags, #socialmedia would be considered a content hashtag. Your company'due south industry hashtags would likewise exist considered content hashtags.

You'll want to track these so that you know which are the nearly pop content hashtags to use when sharing content like a blog post or other industry-related news. Check tools like RiteTag to understand which content hashtags are the nearly popular and are seen the most often.

Branded hashtags

A branded hashtag is a hashtag that your company has created and promotes every bit a way of tagging your visitor straight. For example, @KITKAT uses #KITKAT equally a manner to promote their product across Twitter.

Many times, a branded hashtag is simply your visitor proper name or your company name + a keyword like your production or service.

Tracking this hashtag is a great fashion to encounter how many people are talking about your business organization specifically. You'll desire to use a monitoring tool like Sprout Social's Discovery feature to keep tabs on conversations surrounding your branded hashtag.

social media analytics banner

Trending hashtags

You can hands find out which hashtags are trending by checking out your sidebar on Twitter's desktop website or by tapping the magnifying glass icon on the smartphone app. The platform itself will permit you know how many people are talking well-nigh each of the trending hashtags so you'll know ahead of time if it's worth incorporating into your content.

Screenshot of trending hashtags on Twitter

Using trending hashtags in a way that'south relevant to your content and appropriate to your make voice can assist increase viral attention on your mail service. Be sure to check your Twitter report to see how the impact differs from using your regular hashtags.

Event hashtags

If your company is hosting an effect, if your team members are attending an industry event or conference, or if you're tweeting nigh a large upshot going on nationally or internationally (i.e., large sporting events), be sure to incorporate the consequence's hashtag in all of your posts about that event.

Live tweeting is a great manner to generate traction around your event and event hashtag and increase reach and engagement on your content.

Monitoring your Sprout Social Twitter study is a great manner to determine how much appointment your event chatter generated around your business and if you were able to increase your attain, follower count, and more than. Doing some social listening is a swell way to bank check in on how many people were also using the aforementioned event hashtag or discussing related topics.

Campaign/ad hashtags

A campaign/advertisement hashtag is a hashtag that your company creates for a specific campaign, launch, or digital advertising. This helps to generate buzz around one specific matter that your concern is doing.

For case, Starbucks will use dissimilar hashtags each time they're promoting a new potable.

If your company is trying to promote a new product or service launch or is running a specific entrada, creating a new hashtag for your company and your customers to employ is a great fashion to become the buzz out. These hashtags are also great for tracking since they're so specific to each campaign's focus compared to your recurring brand or content hashtags.

Social listening is a peachy strategy for monitoring use of your entrada/advertizing hashtags and how well they're catching on with your audience.

Start tracking your hashtag analytics today

At present that you've got the know-how and the tools, don't wait some other solar day to start testing and tracking your hashtag use in your social strategy. Asking a demo to learn more than about how Sprout Social tin can assistance with your hashtag analytics, and let us know your favorite ways to implement hashtags in the comments!