Hashtag analytics: Your complete guide to tracking hashtag performance

Are hashtags still important? As algorithms change, there’s been debate around whether hashtags’ relevancy has changed, too. There are already emerging differences in hashtag use and priority across on social platforms–like TikTok’s prioritizing video watch time and user behavior over hashtags–but the truth is, hashtagging is still a powerful organic social media tool.

Like the many nuances across social platforms, hashtag use is no different. Understanding how certain networks use and prioritize hashtags can help your brand use them effectively. For example, LinkedIn weighs hashtags less than personal connections and engagement history. Posts with fewer, highly relevant hashtags often perform better than those that have dozens. Hashtags on X (formerly Twitter) tend to revolve around real-time conversations and events. And Instagram prioritizes content based on user behavior (like their interests and past interactions) rather than hashtags alone, so finding hashtags that align with audience interests is key.

When you strategize with these nuances in mind, implementing the right tags can drive people to your content and get them talking about your brand. They offer a relevant way for brands to categorize content, join conversations relevant to their audiences and track campaign impact.

To find the right hashtags for your account, both hashtag research and continued analysis must play a crucial role in the process.

This guide contains everything you need to know about hashtag analytics so you can increase your brand’s reach and engagement on social media.

What is hashtag analytics?

Hashtag analytics refers to the collection of metrics and data for hashtags within a social media network such as X, Instagram and YouTube. Hashtag analytics fall under the umbrella of social media analytics that brands use to inform strategy and make decisions. Brands use hashtag analytics for tracking campaign performance, identifying emerging trends and gauging audience sentiment. Hashtag tracking provides real-time feedback on engagement and visibility that can make it uniquely valuable when compared with other analytics methods.

How to track hashtags

You can use native features on social platforms to track hashtags, like X analytics or Instagram analytics. But a more effective approach is to use social media management software like Sprout Social for deeper insights.

We explain how to track natively and within Sprout below.

How to natively track hashtags on X

You can use X analytics to measure your engagements, impressions, replies, shares and other important metrics. Most of these more advanced native hashtag analytics tools are now only available if you have X Premium.

If you don’t have X Premium, you can still natively track hashtags manually in a few ways. You can search for hashtags in X’s search bar to find popular posts using a hashtag.

You can also use X’s Trending list to see topics generating conversations. Clicking on each topic will reveal popular posts, where you can find more relevant hashtags.

Use X’s Lists feature to join groups and track key industry experts. Regularly monitor your lists to find relevant industry talking points and identify popular hashtags that are being used.

Because many of X’s hashtag analytic tools are now behind the X Premium paywall, it’s more challenging to natively track hashtags without upgrading. Manual tracking is free but time-intensive, so you might want to invest your energy elsewhere. A more comprehensive social media management tool like Sprout can be an effective solution, as you can track X hashtags as well as hashtags across Instagram and other platforms from a single, unified platform.

How to natively track hashtags on Instagram

Monitor your Instagram hashtags natively using Post Insights, which is only found in Instagram Business.

To access Post Insights, select the individual post you want to track, then select the View Insights button. Instagram will then give you all of the insights information for your chosen post; think likes, comments, shares and other information.

If you scroll down, you’ll see how many impressions your post received from your chosen hashtags. This can show you how effectively your chosen hashtags performed. You could also use a spreadsheet to track your hashtags and their performance over time, so you can make adjustments when necessary.

Remember, this data is aggregated from all of your chosen hashtags. It will appear under the Impressions section beside the phrase From Hashtags and will tell you how many total impressions your account has received from all the hashtags you’ve used. It isn’t possible to track the performance of individual hashtags in Instagram natively at the moment, but you could use A/B testing with different hashtags in posts to see what performs better. To have a full range of hashtag tracking data on Instagram, you’ll need an advanced social media management tool.

How to track hashtags using Sprout

Sprout provides hashtag tracking support through its social listening tools.

By using Sprout’s Conversation Breakdown widget within Social Listening, you can visualize the leading conversations around your current Listening topics. You can then specifically search for hashtags within Conversation Breakdown.

This will show you the top hashtags your followers use at the time of searching. You can track trending hashtags around specific conversations, and can also track their sentiment. Sentiment is categorized into Positive, Neutral and Negative segments to showcase how your audience perceives your hashtags and the conversations happening around them. Are they linked to positive conversations that benefit your brand, or are they a signal of brand detractors?

You can also break down your tracked hashtags further by viewing them based on either volume or engagement. This can show you the most-used hashtags around a topic, as well as which hashtags your followers share and interact with the most.. Track both high-volume hashtags and high-engagement hashtags so you have a variety of useful hashtags to use across your future content.

It’s also worth noting that Sprout can unify your hashtag tracking across platforms. You’ll get a more comprehensive overview of hashtags used across various social networks.

This combined data can make it easier for you to plot an overarching hashtag strategy, alongside platform-specific approaches. It also saves you time when tracking hashtags across several different accounts.

How to track hashtags on social media content and messages using Sprout

Use Tags to tag any scheduled social messages across all of your profiles with a unique hashtag. Once published, use Sprout Social Tag Report to see how your content performs. This can help you track the performance of individual campaigns, events, content categories and more.

You can also use Tags to group inbound messages containing the same hashtag. This can give you a better understanding of how your audience is using hashtags to communicate directly with your brand. One example of how this might work is during a UGC (user-generated content) campaign, where you’ve created a unique hashtag and encouraged users to create and share content as part of a competition or other strategy. All of these features, including Tags, Conversation Breakdown and more, are available to try for free via Sprout’s 30-day trial.

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Important metrics and considerations for hashtag tracking

​​Tracking hashtags is important to determine if a hashtag is working for your social strategy. Here are a few top social media metrics that’ll help you determine the success of a hashtag.

Popularity

Hashtags that are used often tend to be searched often, so it’s a good idea to include tags that have proven to be popular. Just make sure you’re not spamming your followers with irrelevant, trending hashtags for popularity’s sake. Popularity also helps define the success of campaigns. If you notice a campaign hashtag is popular among your target audience, you know it resonates.

Reach

Reach is an important part of your hashtag analysis because it measures how many people actually see your content. If your reach isn’t very high, you’re probably not using the best hashtags for your campaign or strategy.

Engagement and interactions

Not only do you want to make sure people are using and seeing your hashtags, you want to make sure people are also interacting with them. Posting hashtagged content that gets users sharing will expand the reach of your campaign. Engagement metrics also help you measure the impact of your campaigns.

Remember that different types of interactions offer different insights. Likes are useful for tracking basic engagement, shares show how willing people are to share your hashtagged topics with others‌ and replies can show you how well a hashtag creates conversations. You can also go one step further and track comment sentiment.

Users

Who, specifically, is using the hashtags? Make sure you see users within your target audience using and searching for the same hashtags in your posts so your message resonates.

Sentiment

Hashtags often represent specific interests or communities. Tracking the sentiment associated with a hashtag gives you insight into what your audience cares about, likes or dislikes. Use sentiment analysis to identify hashtags that can positively impact how your audience perceives your brand. It can also help you figure out if your content is resonating positively or negatively, enabling real-time optimizations to campaigns.

In Sprout Social Listening, you can track the sentiment of hashtags quickly and easily. You can look at conversations happening around a certain topic, and narrow in on the related hashtags surfacing during those conversations–with the option to filter them by Positive, Negative, or All Sentiment.

Types of hashtags to track

There are several different types of hashtags that you’ll use in your social media content. Here’s why it’s good practice to track each one.

Location hashtags

Use location hashtags to scale your strategy internationally. Region-specific hashtags help you connect with your target audience in relevant locations. For example, if you’re a London-based restaurant, you might use the tag #londonrestaurants as it has over 1.1 million posts including the hashtag on Instagram.

Event hashtags

If you want to incorporate industry hashtags, consider using event hashtags. You can use these tags when your brand hosts an event, attends a conference or if you’re posting about a national or international event (i.e. big sporting events). You can use these tags to live post, which can help generate traction around your event and increase reach and engagement on your content. Pre-event hashtags are best to create anticipation before an event and can start a month or so before the event to build hype. Live event hashtags on the day will be more frequent and allow participants to react, engage and collaborate with real-time updates.

To capitalize on the buzz surrounding the Oscars season, Sprout used the #Oscars on our Instagram account to promote our content that shared which talking points were trending during the event.

Branded hashtags

These types of hashtags are created to encourage tagging your business directly and usually include a brand name, product or service. Barbour, a UK clothing brand since 1894, has their own hashtag, #BarbourWayOfLife, and encourages their customers to tag themselves for a chance to be featured on their socials.

Tracking branded hashtags—especially campaign-specific hashtags—is a great way to see how many people are talking about your business specifically.

Campaign/ad hashtags

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

To promote the new season of The White Lotus, HBO Max is promoting #TheWhiteLotus across X. They use the hashtag in their account bio and when posting content related to the show. By creating and using this hashtag, they’ve also encouraged other accounts on X to use it when talking about the popular new series, furthering the reach of the hashtag and building the buzz around the show itself.

These hashtags are ideal for tracking since they’re specific to each campaign’s focus compared to recurring brand or content hashtags. Use social listening to monitor your campaign hashtags and how well they’re catching on with your audience.

Trending hashtags

You can review trending hashtags natively on X and Instagram’s Explore pages via desktop or mobile by tapping the magnifying glass icon. Instagram will show the volume of people talking about or using the trending hashtags, and X will show if the hashtag is popular or trending.

Not all trending tags will be relevant to your brand or industry, but analyzing them will help you identify the best tags to incorporate into your strategy or campaign. Using trending hashtags, like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt or #Barbenheimer, that are relevant to your content and brand voice will extend your reach and awareness. By reviewing analytics, you’ll see how trending hashtags differ from other ones.

Product and service hashtags

A product- or service-specific hashtag is often used to promote a particular offering and track social discussions related to it. It can be a generic hashtag (e.g. #makeup) or branded (e.g. #DuoChromeEyeShadow). Analyzing the conversations and engagement around these hashtags helps you understand customer perceptions, identify trends and get ahead of potential crises.

e.l.f. Cosmetics’ UK Instagram account uses the branded product-specific #ThirstBurstDrops hashtag when promoting its skin hydration product. This enables them to monitor the reach and impact of their product marketing campaign promoting the release of new scents to their lip balm collection.

Why is hashtag research critical for business?

Beyond campaign and content optimization, hashtag research can impact your social media strategy and the entire business in several ways. Here are five specific reasons why hashtag analysis is critical.

• Understand your audience: Hashtags are like signals on social media that draw specific people. Monitoring who’s engaging with your hashtag can reveal if that audience aligns with your target market. Use those insights to help build personas and guide your content development to better meet customer needs and extend your reach through the right hashtags.
• Keep your competitive edge: Hashtag analysis can help you keep an eye on the competition. By looking at competitor hashtags, you can figure out what is and isn’t working for them and within your industry. These insights help you stay ahead of the competition by learning from them. And if you want to take this a step further, set up a competitor hashtag tracking list in Sprout.
• Analyze sentiment: Hashtags can help identify the feelings expressed by your audience in relation to specific topics or brands. This enables you to understand public perception of your brand, industry, competitors and more in real-time. Use this research to tailor your content to better resonate with your audience, and address any emerging issues.
• Stay relevant: Find new trends by looking at popular or emerging hashtags related to your industry or your audience’s interests. Then tailor your content and campaigns to align with the trending hashtags most relevant to your brand. This will help increase visibility and your brand’s relevance in the market. Hashtag research should be part of an ongoing process as trends will change over time.
• Find influencers and advocates: Find your biggest fans or influencers that align with your audience and brand. Research hashtags to uncover people who are frequently posting influential content related to your products or services, and engaging actively with your brand. Recognizing and collaborating with these brand advocates can help increase visibility, credibility and broaden your reach while strengthening brand loyalty.

Hashtag research tools to use

Researching hashtags is much easier if you use a hashtag research tool. These are some of the best options available today if you’re looking to streamline how you handle hashtag research.

Sprout Social

Sprout’s hashtag tracking tools and automated data reports make tracking and monitoring hashtag analytics more efficient so you can increase your reach and grow your audience faster.

Our Listening tool enables you to dig deeper into conversations using certain hashtags and keywords to understand user sentiment and engagement around particular topics related to your brand, competitors or industry.

Use Sprout to research the most popular hashtags on the social platforms you’re using. You can also research leading hashtags that are relevant to your particular market or industry. Gather data using Sprout’s detailed reports, and use this research to inform which hashtags to track and how to improve your wider hashtag strategy.

RiteTag

RiteTag provides real-time hashtag suggestions for images and text on social media platforms. It also offers a “hashtag comparison” feature that allows you to compare the performance of different hashtags.

The hashtag research tool analyzes hashtag performance in real time, providing you with data-driven suggestions for optimal reach and engagement. This means you’ll discover hashtags that are trending right now, increasing the likelihood of your content being seen by a wider audience.

Display Purposes

Display Purposes takes your brand’s specific needs into account when researching hashtags. By analyzing your Instagram profile and the keywords you provide, it generates hashtag suggestions that are relevant to your content and target audience. This ensures you’re reaching the right people and increasing your chances of engagement.

Meta Hashtags

Meta Hashtags can be used to research and analyze hashtags across Instagram. When you search for a specific hashtag, you’ll be given several more relevant keywords as well as data on how the hashtag is used. You can also navigate directly to examples of content using a hashtag, so you can see how the content appears on Instagram itself.

Meta Hashtags offers more advanced analytics and features for Instagram hashtags on its paid plans. These include being able to perform more advanced searches with more filters, and being able to track your competitor’s hashtag use.

Keyword Tool

Though it’s mainly used for keyword strategies, you can also use Keyword Tool to research hashtags. Keyword Tool can assist with hashtag research across YouTube, X, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok.

When you search for a related keyword, the tool will also provide you with suggested hashtags. You can go one step further by using its “negative keyword” filter to remove any hashtags or keywords that you don’t want to appear. This is useful to remove any keywords that have negative connotations or which are directly linked to your competition.

Uncover insights with hashtag analytics

Now that you’ve got more know-how about native and non-native tag tracking tools, don’t wait another day to test and track your hashtag analytics. Sign up for a free trial to experience how Sprout’s hashtag tracking tools will help you optimize your social strategy by improving engagement with data-driven insights, learning how to track performance and more.