8 Key Hashtag Metrics You Should Track in 2024

The controversy over the movie adaptation of the novel “It Ends with Us”, and the actress playing the lead, Blake Lively, took over the Internet. Hashtag #ItEndsWithUsMovie quickly evolved from a marketing tool to a focal point of debate for critics and fans – in the past month, it was used 6,626 times and reached over 570 MILLION (!) people on social media. Reach is one of the key hashtag metrics you should track.

Tracking hashtag metrics is a crucial aspect of every social media strategy. It allows you to explore hashtag performance, see how effective your social media and hashtag campaigns are, and optimize your content. You can also identify emerging trends in your industry or niche. The best way to effectively track hashtag metrics is to use hashtag tracking tools.

In this article, using #ItEndsWithUsMovie and other interesting examples, I will show you all the hashtag metrics you need to track to know how hashtags perform.

What are hashtag metrics?

Hashtag metrics refer to the data and analytics that describe the hashtag performance. In a nutshell, they tell you how well hashtag performs.

Hashtag metrics are significant for understanding the impact of your social media efforts.

They can be your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for evaluating the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.

Key hashtag metrics to track:

01 The volume of mentions

The volume of mentions is an elementary hashtag metric! It tells how many pieces of content (posts, comments) mention a particular hashtag.

Why is this metric so crucial?

Because it indicates hashtag popularity. The more mentions a hashtag has, the more popular it is.

If people on social media use your branded hashtag, that’s great – it increases your brand awareness!

How to measure?

Social media platforms show the total number of times a given hashtag was used in posts but not in comments.

For example, on Instagram, you type the hashtag in the search bar, and the number of uses is displayed.

Unfortunately, most platforms don’t offer much regarding hashtag metrics.

No worries, there is a solution for that!

You can easily track hashtags with hashtag tracking tools (also called hashtag trackers). One such tool is Brand24.

This tool detects all mentions across the Internet, including social media platforms.

Once you have created a project with a particular hashtag, you receive a graph containing the number of mentions (blue line):

As you can see, more #ItEndsWithUsMovie mentions started appearing shortly before the release (August 9) and continued until a few days after it. At the end of the month, the situation calmed down.

You can also choose which sources it should include hashtags from:

As a result, you receive a graph containing only the hashtag mentions from a chosen source:

The cool thing about Brand24 is that it marks big increases in volume with exclamation points and explains what such an increase is due to:

Based on the number of mentions, Brand24 shows trending hashtags. You can see the most popular hashtags within your niche:

Or trending hashtags referring to the hashtag you monitor:

Interestingly, #BlakeLively is the third trending hashtag related to #ItEndsWithUsMovie. #ColleenHoover is the fourth trending hashtag; Hoover is the author of the book on which the movie is based.

Tip: Incorporate top trending hashtags into your social media strategy to increase your reach.

02 Social media reach

Social media reach is closely connected to the previous metric.

It is the number of unique social media users who have seen content that mentions a particular hashtag.

So, the more posts and comments containing your hashtag, the more reach your hashtag can get.

By measuring reach, you can see how visible your hashtag is and whether it effectively reaches the target audience.

How to measure?

The only way to measure the reach of a hashtag across social media is to use third-party tools.

Brand24, one of the best hashtag analytics tools, measures hashtag reach in real-time.

The reach of the hashtag #ItEndsWithUsMovie is exactly 578,649,350 MILLIONS (!). If we picture this number, it’s like everyone living in the United States and Pakistan saw a post with that hashtag!

Brand24 shows how reach changes over time and, like in the number of mentions, explains what caused the rise.

03 Sentiment

Sentiment analysis is an important hashtag metric to discover how people feel about your hashtag and the content associated with it.

Hashtag sentiments are divided into negative, positive, and neutral.

Why is it important?

Imagine your branded hashtag is used frequently – great, right? But what if people are talking about you in all the wrong ways?

Just because your hashtag is popular doesn’t mean it’s a win.

That’s where sentiment comes in. It helps you track the overall vibe of the conversations happening around your hashtag.

How to measure?

Measuring sentiment is easy, but under one condition – use a hashtag monitoring tool.

All collected hashtag mentions are categorized and nicely presented:

Also, each detected mention has a sentiment tag attached to it:

Brand24 also detects which source generates the most negative sentiment:

04 Emotions

This metric is one step further from sentiment.

While sentiment tells you if people feel good or bad, emotions go deeper – they capture exactly how people mentioning a particular hashtag feel.

Are they feeling joy, or are they sad? Maybe they are even disgusted?

Emotions give you a full picture of the emotional connection.

If the hashtag evokes joy or admiration, it builds a strong connection.

But if it evokes sadness, disgust, fear, or anger, it’s a red flag! Something might be wrong!

How to measure?

Some hashtag trackers, such as Brand24, are also emotion detection software!

It detects specific emotions and shows how they change over time:

And, of course, Brand24 shows the distribution of emotions across social media and other sources:

05 Volume of interactions

This metric is the total number of likes, comments, shares, and reposts generated by posts using a specific hashtag.

It’s important; it shows you hashtag engagement.

It’s a clear sign that people aren’t just seeing your posts with specific hashtags – they’re connecting with them, reacting to them, and sharing them with the world.

Interactions reflect the actual influence your hashtag is generating in the social space.

How to measure?

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter provide this metric, but they just show how many likes, comments, or reposts a particular post has.

Brand24 goes bigger!

It tracks post-level interactions and shows you the total number of interactions your hashtag generates across social media!

Based on the interactions, Brand24 highlights the most popular mentions:

06 The most influential authors

When it comes to hashtags, it’s also about who is using them!

This metric literally tells you who is the most important author mentioning your hashtag.

Thanks to this metric:

• You see if any influential source mentions your hashtag
• You notice to which extent the hashtag has spread that key influencers have started using it
• You can easily find the right influencers for future social media campaign

How to measure?

You can manually track which influential accounts use your hashtag, but let’s be honest – you’d probably pass out faster than you’d notice that one particular hashtag.

That’s why using tools to track influential authors automatically is a game-changer.

Brand24 can track mentions and identify the most influential authors based on influencer marketing metrics such as follower count, voice share, influence, and Influencer Score.

Here’s the best part: you decide what makes someone the best influencer! Click on the factor at the top of the table, and you will get a ranking based on it.

Specific posts with hashtags from the most popular profiles are also listed:

07 Share of Voice

SOV (Share of Voice), as a hashtag metric, tells how much of the conversation your hashtag is capturing compared to your competitors.

If your hashtag drives a large share of the conversations, it’s good! People are more likely to talk about your brand and use your hashtag than talk about your competitors and use their hashtags.

How to measure?

You can calculate SOV by dividing the volume of your hashtag mentions by the total number of mentions (yours + competitors’ hashtag mentions). Then multiply by 100 to get the percentage.

SOV = (number of your hashtag mentions / total number of hashtags’ mentions) x 100

Example: If your hashtag was mentioned 3,000 times and competitors’ hashtags were mentioned 7,000 times, your SOV would be 30%.

You can use the same formula when counting this metric in the context of social media reach:

SOV = (hashtag reach / total hashtags’ reach) x 100

I don’t know about you, but for me, making calculations manually is a waste of time – Brand24 does it for you. You just need to define relevant hashtags for comparison.

The “Alien: Romulus” movie had a similar release date to “It Ends with Us”. So let’s measure the SOV of #ItEndsWithUsMovie in comparison to #AlienRomulus:

It turns out that #ItEndsWithUsMovie dominates the conversation in terms of social media reach (63%), while #AlienRomulus takes the crown in mentions (79%).

It’s a split victory – one hashtag owns the reach, and the other owns the buzz!

08 AVE

AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent) can be used to add even more insights into your hashtag campaigns.

AVE measures how much you would’ve had to spend on ads to generate the same amount of organic exposure your hashtag achieved.

If your hashtag is crushing it, AVE proves its worth by showing how much you saved! It can justify your marketing budget!

How to measure?

It isn’t easy to calculate this metric by yourself.

But since the number of mentions is taken to calculate it, Brand24 does it for you!

Brand24’s powerful hashtag analytics help you see where your AVE comes from!

Let’s check #ItEndsWithUs:

It shows that 92% of the $41.8M generated – and that’s very important information – comes from TikTok!

The power of TikTok is unbelievable!

Tip: Advanced tools can analyze metrics for you

To measure hashtag metrics, you need to use advanced external tools. Some social media platforms offer built-in analytics, but they are very limited and do not measure key hashtag metrics.

Besides, imagine having to check each dashboard separately. This is time-consuming and inefficient.

Brand24, an AI hashtag monitoring tool, provides comprehensive hashtag analysis in one place.

You just have to select a hashtag, and the tool automatically monitors its performance on various social media channels and other places on the Internet.

You can track your own hashtags and any other hashtag you want:

• Hashtags on different social media such as Twitter hashtags, Instagram hashtags, TikTok hashtags, YouTube hashtags, LinkedIn hashtags
• Branded hashtags such as #JustDoIt, #MyCalvins
• Event hashtags such as #Oscars2024, #Paris2024
• Popular hashtags such as #love, #fitness, #ThrowBackThursday

With Brand24, you can even discover trending hashtags relevant to your niche.

Brand24 provides ready-to-use insights, so you don’t have to waste time on analyzing.

The Metrics Analysis tab provides a neat summary of the project. It presents the most important data about your hashtag.

Brand24 is packed with features and insights that go beyond basic metrics. But the real star of the show is AI Brand Assistant.

Think of it as ChatGPT developed specifically for your project!

Brand Assistant dives deep into your project’s data, giving you real-time insights and recommendations.

Whatever question or task you have, the Brand Assistant will always help you… unlike some people!

Brand Assistant will save you tons of time and effort!

Conclusion

A solid marketing strategy should be supported by hashtag usage.

Tracking hashtags and their key metrics is crucial for creating awareness among social media users, enhancing your social visibility, and building engagement.

However, social media analytics often don’t provide detailed data on hashtags. To overcome this, use a hashtag analytics tool for tracking campaign hashtags and other relevant hashtags.

Key takeaways:

• No matter the sector you are in, hashtags still provide value!
• The 8 MUST-track metrics that will level up your game are: the number of hashtag mentions, their social media reach, the sentiment and emotions generated by them, the number of interactions, share of voice, and AVE.
• A hashtag tracking tool is necessary when measuring metrics. Brand24 is the best hashtag tool – it tracks all key metrics, provides meaningful insights, and has its own ChatGPT.
• Continuously monitor your hashtag performance to understand its impact on people.

Gain full insight into 8 key hashtag metrics, track trends in real-time, and discover new opportunities with the built-in AI assistant. Start Brand24’s free trial now!