5 Hashtag Metrics: What Are They and How to Track Them

6 min read

Hashtag metrics. It sounds scary but it’s easier than you think. It could be also called hashtag insights.

Hashtags, if used properly, can become an effective marketing tool. Adding them to your social media posts on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter not only looks cool, categorizes your content, increases its reach but also lets you analyze how these pieces of content perform.

The performance of your hashtags can be described by certain metrics. On the basis of hashtag metrics, you can measure your company brand awareness on the Internet and social media impact of your marketing campaigns or events.

There are 5 main hashtag metrics you can track.

  • Volume of hashtag mentions
  • Volume of interactions your hashtag accumulate
  • Social media reach of mentions containing a hashtag
  • The most influential authors
  • The most interactive authors

They can be tracked by media monitoring tools.

Start tracking hashtag metrics for free.

Metrics Explained

Tracking hashtag metrics can become part of your KPIs (key progress indicators) you can follow on a monthly or weekly basis. You can measure their performance, observe increases, decreases and take necessary actions.

Let’s have a closer look at them.

Volume of hashtag mentions

It’s an elementary hashtag metric. It’s the number of pieces of content mentioning your hashtag in social media: on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Tracking this metric gives you an idea of how popular your hashtags are. You see if they go viral or not at all. I would say it’s good to keep track of it on a weekly basis.

Measure popularity of hashtags with a media monitoring tool!

Volume of interactions

One of hashtag metrics is volume of interactions. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter give users the chance to interact with them: like, comment, share or retweet a piece of content.

Those are called social media interactions. By following this metric, you can assess how engaging your social media posts with hashtags are. The more interactions the better. It indicates if your social media content resonates with your audience.

Social media reach of hashtag mentions

We cannot talk about hashtag metrics without discussing social media reach. Each and every social media post mentioning your hashtag generate a certain social media reach.

Social media reach is an estimated number of social media users who might have come across a given social media post. In other words, this metric shows how many users might have seen a social media post with your hashtag.

The so called brand awareness comes into play here. If a post hits the bullseye, your audience share and mention it including your hashtag. This is how the social media reach increases.

See how your hashtags are performing!

The most influential authors

Another interesting metric you can track is the most important authors mentioning your hashtag.

It’s an insight into social media profiles mentioning your hashtag of a significant social media influence. Social media influence is calculated based on social media reach, the number of followers, activity and the number of interactions of a source.

Thanks to this hashtag metric, you can see if any influential source mentions your hashtag.

Also, if your hashtag is accompanied by a link, this is how you can track the direct source of traffic. It’s more of an educated guess, though. It’s based in an assumption that influential sources have a huge audience. Therefore, your hashtag and link are exposed to a wider audience.

The most interactive authors

These are your hashtag mentions from sources with the largest number of interactions: likes, comments, retweets and shares.

This is how you can identify sources who most often mention your hashtag and drive engagement around it. It can be helpful in identifying endorsers and advocates for your company. Here’s a bit about who micro-influencers are and how to track them.

Check: Key Social Media Metrics

How to Track Hashtag Metrics

There’s plenty of tools that can track hashtag metrics and one of them is Brand24.

It’s a social media monitoring tool that support tracking hashtag performance and social media analysis. Here’s what it looks like:

Apart from collecting keyword mentions from all across the Web and social media, you can use it to analyze the above-mentioned hashtag metrics and more.

IMPORTANT! 

Bear in mind that social media monitoring tools don’t collect historical data. You won’t be able to get 100% accurate data about the past.

You can try it out here for free. No credit card required.

Once you have your account, follow these steps to track hashtag metrics.

Step 1.

Create your project by adding keywords you want to monitor.

hashtag metrics

Create your project for free!

IMPORTANT!

Remember to include the hashtag sign at all costs.

Step 2.

Welcome inside the dashboard. I’ll show you around.

At the top, you can see two graphs. They represent the number of mentions and their social media reach over a specific period of time. You can freely choose the time range.

Engagement graph inside Brand24 dashboard

Find interesting mentions and discover hashtag metrics

Right below the graphs, you can notice sources. 

In there, you can see all sources Brand24 is monitoring and collecting mentions from.

If you want to see your hashtag mentions only from social media, you need to choose only Twitter. This is one of a couple of places where you can see the number of results.

A screenshot from Brand24 showing sources like Twitter

Pick your sources

Now, the dashboard displays only hashtag mentions from these sources.

A mention looks like this:

An image of Twitter mention from Brand24

Here’s what data it shows:

  • Author’s name – sportsmedia in this case
  • Source – Instagram
  • Influencer Score – it’s an algorithm based on the number of followers
  • Interactions – 15 likes and 0 comments
  • Content of the post – in there, you can see the hashtag you monitor
  • Some options

Step 3.

Go inside the analysis tab. 

hashtag metrics

Discover hashtag metrics inside the Analysis tab!

This is where you can thoroughly investigate your hashtag metrics. The analysis contains plenty of data about your hashtag.

This numerical summary shows you all data for a specific period of time, including social media results, estimated social media reach, estimated social media interactions and more!

hashtag metrics

You can learn more. Here’s where you see the most interactive mentions and mentions from the most popular authors.

An image of top popular and top interactive authors on Twitter

Discover valuable hashtag metrics with a media monitoring tool!

Here you have even more data about a hashtag:

Step 4.

Now you need to make sense of this data.

Brand24 can help you manage your data with data export, PDF reports and infographic generator. 

Apart from that you can create a simple Google Sheet and keep track of your hashtag metrics in there.

Conclusion

What’s the ROI of it?

By tracking hashtag metrics, you can see if your social media content including hashtag is popular, drives engagement, is mentioned by influential authors and, in general, how your company performs in social media.

If you need such a solution, try Brand24 for free. No credit card required.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

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