Hashtag Analytics Guide: With Tips, Tools, and Strategies

Hashtag analytics is crucial to understanding where, how, and why your clients’ hashtag strategies succeed or fail. 

Adding hashtags to your clients’ social media posts can boost their visibility and reach, ensuring that the right audiences see their content. 

But how do you know your clients’ hashtag strategies are working and which hashtags are driving engagement and conversions?

This is where hashtag analytics comes in. 

In this guide, we’ll explore the basics of hashtag analytics, including the top tips, strategies, and tools for effectively tracking and measuring the impact of your clients’ hashtag tactics. 

What you will learn

• What is hashtag analytics?
• Why hashtag analytics is important for brands
• Hashtag analytics: What metrics should you track?
• What hashtag types should you track for hashtag analytics?
• What are the top tips and strategies for hashtag analytics?
• What are the best tools for hashtag analytics?
• What are the hashtag analytics FAQs?
• Ready to master hashtag analytics?

What is hashtag analytics?

Hashtag analytics is collecting and tracking key metrics to determine hashtag performance on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. 

[Must read: 120+ Best Instagram Reels Hashtags for Agencies]

It falls under social media analytics and focuses on how your clients’ hashtags amplify their reach and visibility and drive engagement. 

Essentially, hashtag analytics can tell you if your clients’ hashtags yield your expected results, giving you actionable insights to refine your hashtag strategies. 

Why hashtag analytics is important for brands

If you’re still sprinkling hashtags into your clients’ posts and hoping for the best, it’s time for a glow-up. 

Hashtag analytics done correctly can be a game-changer for brands seeking to leverage social media as a significant growth channel.

Below are several reasons why digging into your clients’ hashtag data is worth every second.

They show you what works or not

Not every hashtag is created equal. 

Some drive tons of reach and engagement, while others barely make a ripple.

Without analytics, you’ll end up guessing, which can lead to wasted opportunities.

By tracking your clients’ hashtag performance, you can identify which ones consistently drive the most impressions, likes, comments, and saves. 

It can give you a data-backed list of high-performing hashtags that work for your clients’ audiences over time, not just what’s trending.

Use the hashtag data to compare similar hashtags side by side. 

For instance, comparing #SocialMediaTips vs. #SocialMediaStrategy can help you determine which one brings more engagement, even if both look popular on paper.

They help you maximize reach and discoverability

Hashtags are how people outside your clients’ current followers find their social media content. 

When you know which hashtags drive discovery, you can double down and extend your clients’ reach to entirely new audiences.

Skipping out on hashtag analytics can mean missing out on untapped niches. 

For example, your client’s beauty brand may notice that #VeganSkincare performs better than the broader #SkincareTips with their audience. 

That insight can help you develop hashtag strategies that allow your clients’ brands to reach a passionate, engaged social media community—fast.

They guide smarter content strategies

Your clients’ top-performing hashtags can tell you a lot about their audiences’ interests. 

If you notice your clients’ posts with #EcoFriendlyPackaging blowing up, that’s a cue to create more content around sustainability.

Instead of guessing what to post next month, you can let hashtag analytics steer your content calendar. 

It’s like having a cheat sheet for the topics and content that your clients’ followers care about most, which you can build content on.

They make your social media campaign more cost effective

When you’re running ads or collaborating with influencers, hashtag insights can help you focus your budget on what actually works. 

Why pay to promote a post with low-performing hashtags when you already know which ones drive organic traction?

For influencer campaigns, hashtag analytics also allows you to track whether the hashtags they use are effective, enabling you to optimize partnerships over time.

They turn social media from a guessing game into a growth engine

One of the best aspects of hashtag analytics is that it provides a measurable way to show Return on Investment (ROI) to clients. 

It can track how certain hashtags impact your clients’ reach, engagement, and even conversions over time.

Instead of saying, “We think hashtags help,” you can confidently show them how hashtags are driving brand growth for your clients.

Hashtag analytics: What metrics should you track?

Tracking key metrics is crucial to determine whether your clients’ hashtags work. 

Below are key metrics you can track to determine the performance of your clients’ hashtags. 

Reach

Reach shows the number of people who see your clients’ content.

A low reach can indicate that your clients’ hashtags don’t work for their strategies or campaigns.

Popularity

Monitoring popular hashtags helps you keep up with the trends and discussions your clients’ audiences are interested in. 

Also, if the hashtags used in your clients’ posts become popular, it’s a good sign that the hashtags and content resonate with audiences. 

Use Vista Social to find hashtags easily. 

The social media management platform has an AI hashtag generator that helps you come up with relevant and potentially popular hashtags. 

You can also use the platform’s AI Assistant in the Publisher to generate hashtags with your captions and descriptions.

Sentiment

Hashtags can represent specific communities or interests. 

Monitoring the sentiment associated with hashtags can give you insights into what your clients’ audiences like and are interested in. 

You can leverage the sentiment to determine the hashtags that will likely positively impact how your clients’ brands are perceived. 

Tracking sentiment on specific hashtags can also tell you if your clients’ social media content brings out positive or negative audience reactions. 

Understand the sentiment behind hashtags using Vista Social’s social media listening feature. 

Set up listeners based on the hashtag or keyword, and the social tool will track and pull conversations around those phrases.

Engagement and interactions

Determine whether audiences are interacting with your clients’ hashtags. 

Are people searching for, using, and sharing the hashtags in social media posts?

Tracking hashtag and content engagement metrics helps you assess the impact of your clients’ campaigns. 

What hashtag types should you track for hashtag analytics?

Check out the essential hashtags you should monitor to help boost your clients’ audience engagement. 

• Branded hashtags are unique and often created by companies to promote products or monitor brand-related content. The hashtags are commonly used to raise brand recognition, increase engagement, and encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)
• Location hashtags tag content to specific places such as neighborhoods, landmarks, and cities. The tags help social media users find posts associated with specific locations, making them crucial to posts meant to draw in local audiences 
• Trending hashtags are popular tags usually related to viral posts, current news, and events. 

[Must read: 715 Viral TikTok hashtags: Get More Likes & Followers (2024)]

• Event hashtags are often used to promote or highlight content related to special and upcoming events, such as festivals, concerts, and conferences. The hashtags allow participating users to connect with other attendees, share experiences, and follow real-time updates
• Campaign hashtags are created for specific social media ads or marketing campaigns. The hashtags can help you track the campaign’s performance and reach to simplify measuring its impact 
• Content hashtags describe the post’s theme or subject to help audiences discover content based on their preferences and interests. The hashtags are specific to what the content is about, such as #socialmediaapp for a post about a new social media management tool

Additional tip: Leverage Vista Social’s social media publishing feature to get instant content hashtag suggestions when creating and scheduling your clients’ posts. 

What are the top tips and strategies for hashtag analytics?

Ensure effective and efficient hashtag analytics with these tried-and-true strategies and best practices.

Set goals

Determine what your clients want to achieve with their hashtags. 

Clear goals help guide your hashtag strategies and give your efforts focus. These also help you determine the critical metrics to track for assessing performance.

Focus on the most  relevant metrics

Not every metric is relevant to determining the impact of your clients’ hashtags. 

Focus only on metrics that directly align with your clients’ goals so you avoid drowning in too much data without getting actionable insights. 

Regularly track hashtag performance

Consistently track which hashtags generate the most audience engagement, impressions, and reach. 

The data can provide actionable insights that can inform, shape, and improve your clients’ hashtag and content strategies. 

Track competitors

Check out the hashtags your clients’ competitors use. 

Doing so can help you spot opportunities to differentiate your clients’ approaches, amplify their hashtag strategies, and uncover untapped audiences. 

Compare with past data

Benchmark your clients’ historical hashtag data to compare their performances. 

It allows you to analyze improvement, uncover trends, and refine your clients’ hashtag strategies to sustain and improve results. 

Segment your hashtag analysis

Drill down on your hashtag analysis by segmenting the performance by audiences, platforms, or specific hashtag campaigns.

It can give you more detailed insights that you can leverage to adjust your strategies precisely and accordingly. 

Use analytics tools

Use tools with automated hashtag tracking and analysis to streamline measuring performance and finding trends. 

The tools make it easy to gain deeper insights into the impact of your clients’ hashtags.

What are the best tools for hashtag analytics?

Below are the top tools for tracking and analyzing hashtags. 

Vista Social

Ensure effective and efficient hashtag analytics with Vista Social. 

The platform includes social media analytics features that allow you to generate hashtag reports. 

For instance, the platform can instantly show you the number of interactions generated by the specific hashtags used in your clients’ posts on each social platform, such as Instagram and Threads.

[Must read: Threads Hashtags: Top Hashtags to Get More Likes & Shares]

Vista Social will pull this information even if you don’t add hashtags in your clients’ post captions as long as you schedule posts with your hashtags saved as the first comment. 

You can also run a competitor analysis report to spot hashtag gaps. 

Add a maximum of three competitors, and the hashtag analytics tool will compare the hashtags used across all profiles.

The report can tell you which hashtags competitors often use on specific platforms, which you can include in your clients’ future posts.

Besides analytics and reports, Vista Social offers more features, including the following:

• Social media engagement tools featuring a Social Inbox that simplifies and centralizes managing and responding to follower comments, mentions, messages, and reviews
• Approval workflows that automate your post review approval process
• A link in bio tool with Vista Page, a customizable landing page for your clients’ lead generation and conversion-related content, elements, and more
• A collaborative content calendar for efficient content development, planning, and management
• DM automations to streamline responding to social media messages and comments 
• Bulk content publishing and post queueing
• Social media analytics and reports, including report scheduling and custom report templates
• Review management to track and manage reviews from one platform
• Employee advocacy to run, manage, and track advocacy campaigns easily

In-platform analytics tools

You can leverage the built-in analytics features on social media platforms to get basic hashtag performance insights.

For instance, Instagram Insights (for Business Accounts) can track metrics that help you analyze hashtag performance, such as impressions from hashtags, engagement, reach, and post engagement rates.

TikTok’s in-platform analytics also offers basic insights such as the number of views and engagement associated with certain hashtags. 

[Must read: 923+ Best, Most Popular, Viral Hashtags for Instagram this 2023]

What are the hashtag analytics FAQs?

How do you get hashtag data?

The best way to capture and consolidate data is to use a social media management platform, analytics, or hashtag tracking tool with robust features.

Can Google Analytics track hashtags?

Unfortunately, no, since Google Analytics focuses on tracking social media traffic sources and mediums. 

Can hashtags help improve SEO?

Yes. 

While hashtags are not the only focus, they can help social network algorithms understand and rank your clients’ content if they relate to the post’s keywords and tie into the topic.

Ready to master hashtag analytics?

Tracking and analyzing your clients’ hashtags is crucial to the success of their social media strategies. 

Streamline and simplify your analysis by knowing the key hashtag metrics to track, learning from best practices, and using the right tools.

Leverage Vista Social for seamless hashtag analytics.

Create your Vista Social account now.