Hashtag analytics and tracking are key to planning and managing an effective campaign on social media.
Hashtags started as a way to search for things on Twitter. They're now cross-platform and multi-purpose, used by companies and individuals alike for everything. From major global events like The #WorldCup Final and #SuperBowl, to expressions of solidarity like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.
A good hashtag will capture the imagination of the online public. It helps companies, organizations, and individuals dramatically increase their social media presence.
With so many mentions, tracking hashtags effectively is challenging. Especially across different countries, different languages, and different contexts.
So what’s the solution? Hashtag analytics.
Hashtag tracking tools find the best hashtags for your marketing campaigns and track post performance. Helping you analyze your strategy effectively, and boost your social listening strategy.
If you include hashtags in your social media content, you'll increase the reach and engagement of your social posts.
This is because social media users search for relevant content by using hashtags. Each of the hashtag tracking tools I've listed below, explains how to use each tool for hashtag analysis.
I'll cover the most common hashtags that you'll be using in your social media messaging...
Tools to help you track hashtags in real time come in many shapes and sizes. Some focus on monitoring the conversation, others focus on influencers, and some help you understand exactly what hashtags mean.
We’ve listed 15 free hashtag tracking tools with recommendations from social media experts.
At Talkwalker, people ask, "How to get hashtag analytics for free." While most of these tools offer both free and paid options, some features may be chargeable in the future. But Talkwalker's Free Social Search - our very own hashtag tracker - is and will remain free.
How to track hashtgs for free? While our Analytics platform has a cost, if want a good free hashtag analytics tool, try Free Social Search.
Still packed with amazing features - a free hashtag tracker and hashtag analyzer - to easily measure the impact of hashtags. It looks at a variety of metrics including general buzz, engagement, sentiment, and potential reach.
Free Social Search - sentiment, mentions, engagement surrounding #JimmyChoo.
Free Social Search hashtag cloud.
Of course for a more comprehensive analysis, you require a paid tool like Talkwalker Social Listening.
Talkwalker Social Listening includes:
Hashtagify is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a Hashtagify alternative.
Sometimes when looking for relevant hashtags, you want to know what links different hashtags. Hashtagify helped find hashtags related to your original search as well as the top influencers for each hashtag.
Hastagify provided a hashtag counter for Twitter, plus a wall showing hashtag posts and usage patterns. You could identify a hashtag's popularity, recent popularity, month trend, and week trend. The tool displayed the times of day your hashtag is most used, alongside hashtag performance info.
It was free for hashtag research, with other features available at a price. Other features included comparing hashtags, email alerts, influencer reports, and Instagram research.
Key features:
Here’s what a couple of social media experts had to say:
“We are a huge fan of Hashtagify and use it to find, analyse and amplify our tweets. It’s a great tool and is perfect for those wanting to gain better insights into their competitors and top influencers.
Their Hashtags Encylopedia is particularly useful as it provides advanced filtering, and therefore makes it even easier to find hashtags.”
Lilach Bullock (@lilachbullock) Founder of lilachbullock.com, Forbes Top 20 Women Social Media Power Influencer
“My favorite free hashtag tracking tool is Hashtagify because they have two very unique features: Hashtag relationship analysis and hashtag trends (which are independent of official Twitter trends). I use Hashtagify for trend tracking, content inspiration, keyword research and social media update optimization. It’s unbelievable that those features are free.”
Ann Smarty (@seosmarty) Founder of myBlogU.com, Brand Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas
*Hashtagify has both free and paid elements, so stick to the related hashtags and top influencers tabs if you're only interested in free data.
RiteTag is cool. It's like having your hashtag personal trainer. Once signed in, the tool judges whether the hashtags you’re using in your tweets are appropriate.
You can search a list of currently trending hashtags, with statistics including the number of tweets and retweets per hour. Plus, you can check out connections and stats for each hashtag you use.
Other features include the instant feedback option and integration of social media tools like Buffer and Hootsuite.
There’s also a Chrome extension which is unique when compared to similar tools. As with most of the tools on the list, you can use aspects of the tools for free, but you'll need to pay for advanced elements.
Key features:
Taggbox is one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly tools available to harness the power of UGC.
Taggbox makes it easy for businesses to aggregate, curate, and display UGC from a variety of sources. These include social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
With easy-to-use dashboards and powerful filtering and moderation capabilities. Businesses can showcase the best UGC related to their brand, products, or services.
One of the standout features of Taggbox is its customization options. Choose from a range of pre-built templates and designs, or create your own using the intuitive drag-and-drop editor.
This allows businesses to fully customize the look and feel of their UGC displays to match their branding and marketing goals.
Key features:
Overall, if you're looking for a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use UGC tool, Taggbox is worth considering.
Socialert is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a Socialert alternative.
Socialert was an easy-to-use tool for hashtag tracking that gave quick overviews of hashtag performance for free. Enter a hashtag, keyword, or @mention, to generate an automatic report to dig into social media platforms like Twitter. More than just hashtag tracking or keyword analytics, Socialert did event tracking, brand monitoring, and tracking competitors.
The filtering capability let you know what people were talking about around your brand on various social media channels. You could get a sample Twitter (X) report like the one above for free and for the rest you'd need to choose one of their paid options.
Key features:
Hashtags.org is the go-to place for general information on hashtags. It identifies top trending hashtags in different genres such as business, tech, entertainment, etc.
It also includes resources such as how to use hashtags, and general info about using Twitter (X). It’s a great learning resource for starting with hashtags and shows you what makes hashtag successful. Free and paid options are available.
Key features:
If you want to see what the world is talking about, you need a Twitter trends count tool like Trendsmap. It gives you an instant overview.
In the free version, you can instantly see the current most popular hashtags in every country and region in the world. It's basically a Twitter (X) hashtag count. You can zoom in and out of the map to get the exact view that you want and the overall effect is visually appealing.
If you need to check popular or trending hashtags for a particular location. There’s a hashtag location map where you can see popular hashtags, users, and keywords. Provides data for the last 7 days. You get much more in-depth data and filtering options if you opt for one of their paid options.
Key features
TweetReach is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a TweetReach alternative.
TweetReach provided a clear and simple way to understand the performance of your posts through visualizations. Free analytics – snapshots – captured activity for the last 100 tweets using your hashtag.
You could see the top contributors and download a PDF report. You'll be able to see your top hashtag’s estimated reach, impressions, and contributors. TweetReach’s paid version will also give you analytics from Instagram and Facebook, as well as Twitter (X).
Key features:
TweetBinder is a great tool for getting a quick, top-level overview about your social performance. The visualizations are clear and easy to understand, ideal for those new to social media analytics.
An overall analytics tool shows the total tweets related to the conversations over time, the retweets, or the links. Effective visuals, breaks down tweets by type, including text tweets, replies, retweets or tweets with images. You get a free report of up to 2000 tweets from the last 7 days but beyond that you will need to pay. There are also analytics available to find hashtags on Instagram.
Key features:
TweetChat is no longer available. We suggest using Talkwalker as a TweetChat alternative.
TweetChat was good for engaging in Twitter chats, with the option to see what other popular chats were happening. You could directly post tweets, retweets, and likes on the hashtag using its interface.
Key features:
Similar to Trendsmap, #onemilliontweetmap is great for getting an overview of hashtag usage across the world. I think what’s best about this tool is the level of detail it provides through intuitive filtering options. The map view is clear and from a visualization standpoint, you can see mentions take place as they happen.
This hashtag tool provides a map with the most popular hashtags in a particular location. You can also view via a heatmap, with your own selected time ranges.
Key features:
How do you analyze trends on Twitter? Go to the source.
Don’t forget that Twitter (X) itself is a useful hashtag monitoring tool. Particularly when looking for emerging trends.
When you log in to Twitter (X) you can see trending hashtags on the left. You can change the location as well and you can see trending hashtags or keywords in your chosen area.
Because it's an inbuilt feature of Twitter, you don’t need to leave Twitter to know about trending hashtags and keywords. Also, when you click a trending hashtag, you can see tweets and other information with the standard Twitter interface. There are also a wide variety of advanced searches (rounded up in this great thread).
TWChat is another Twitter chat tracker that helps you track and contribute to Twitter chats more effectively. The home page contains a list of tweetchats that you can filter based on categories of your interest.
It has all the basic features needed to host and join any Twitter chat. The automatic hashtag additions and multiple tracking features make it a nice option for Twitter chat hosts. The ability to filter for questions is also a nice touch.
Key features
TrackMyHashtag is a Twitter (X) hashtag-tracking tool
TrackMyHashtag is another useful tool, specifically designed to track hashtags on Twitter. It allows you to track any keyword, hashtag, or mention, in real time.
You can also request historical data as a report, so you can dig deep into any hashtag you like.
Their Tweet Counter / Hashtag Counter is especially useful if you only want to look into the raw numbers of a hashtag. It shows you how many Tweets used a specific hashtag within a set time. Plus average usage and a timeline.
Key features
For Premium Twitter / X subscribers, TweetDeck (now known as X Pro) is a simple way to keep track of multiple hashtags, or conversations. With a simple interface and quick engagement options, TweetDeck is great for engaging in live discussions.
It’s not too bad for scheduling, but it's limited to Twitter. The platform connects to your Twitter account with an option to add multiple accounts.
Key features:
To take your hashtag tracking to another level, you need Talkwalker Social Listening. The complete platform enables you to track all your social channels. And boost performance with keyword and hashtag analysis. To learn more, or request a free trial, click below.