How To Search Hashtags Across Social Media Channels

How To Search Hashtags Across Social Media Channels

Knowing how to search hashtags is critical to being run successful campaigns on social media.

Using these hashtag tools can help you reveal insights into your audience and help you achieve your social media objectives.

#1 – HOW HASHTAGS HELP YOUR BUSINESS

Expand Reach

You can help people in niche topics find each other and join in the conversation. A great way to build connections.

Amplify Your Campaigns

You can launch a campaign idea or new product by using your own hashtag. Give people an easy way to share your campaign or product.

Promote Specials and Events

You can use a hashtag to promote your events or use them to help people get special promotional offers.

Segment your audience

Use different hashtags to specifically talk to different customer segments.

Cross-Pollinate

Cross-pollinate popular content with your hashtag to other social networks to maintain momentum.

2 – WHICH SOCIAL NETWORKS USE HASHTAGS

The hashtag became popular on Twitter but has since been adopted by many other social networks.

Twitter – here is the link to Twitters GuideFacebook link to Facebook guide to hashtags
Pinterest
Instagram – guide to using hastags

 

3 – WHY USE HASHTAGS – THE SCIENCE

HASHTAGS ON TWITTER

Dan Zarella has performed many experiments and conducted a lot of research into social media.

His research shows that Tweets that contain one or more hashtags were 55% more likely to be ReTweeted than Tweets that do not.

Research by BuddyMedia found that that the number of hashtags you use affects results with one or two hashtags producing the best results. When you use more than two hashtags, engagement levels drop by an average of 17 percent.

HASHTAGS ON FACEBOOK

Initial results are that despite Facebook introducing hashtags in 2013 and the rapid adoption of them by brands they actually do not increase engagement.

However Facebook seems to be experimenting with trending hashtags and Google are showing Facebook hashtags in search results.

Other results from Socialbakers show that perhaps the adoption of hashtags is still in its early stages.

HASHTAGS ON PINTEREST

The first thing to bear in mind on Pinterest is that hashtags aren’t clickable in board titles, board descriptions, account descriptions, or profile names. Hashtags are only clickable and searchable in Pin descriptions, and they work differently than they do on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Hashtags are most powerful on Pinterest when they’re unique. Create a one-of-a-kind hashtag that, when clicked, will lead Pinners back to your content.

Here’s an example from Jewelry for a Cause contest using the hashtags #pintowin and #jumpforjune.

How To Search Hashtags

HASHTAGS ON INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a great visual channel for your brand. A study showed that Instagram provides brands with up to 25% more engagement than other social platforms. By using Instagram hashtags you can focus on specific topics that are of interest to your target audience.

To find out trending hashtags specific to Instagram check out the popular tag list on Webstagram.

It seems up to seven hashtags generate the most post likes. After seven there is a noticeable drop possibly due to the number of hashtags being perceived as spam. As a general rule, I would recommend using no more than 5 hashtags or your post can make it look spammy.

HASHTAGS ON GOOGLE PLUS

While other social media channels rely on users to tag their own updates, Google+ is helps by suggesting hashtags for you.

Even though in the post below I didn’t add a hashtag to hashtags Google Plus automatically added it.

Whilst there isn’t any research I could find about the number of hashtags, it seems fair to say that you can add as many as you like. However, as with other forms of search you need to ensure that you use RELEVANT hashtags to the post not just a random assortment hoping to get traffic.

4 – HOW TO CHOOSE A HASHTAG

The first thing you need to decide is if you need your own unique hashtag e.g. for running an event, or use a popular hashtag in your market or use a trending topic.

Either way you need to do your research:

  • If you are creating your own simply you will want to check to see if it is already in use. There could already be a hashtag being used for a completely different subject, and you don?t want to people to lose interest by finding posts that are not relevant to them.
  • Many industries have hashtags that have become adopted for different topics over time. Because of this they are often regularly used and followed by large audiences. e.g. popular business to business hashtags – #b2b, #B2BMarketing, #B2BSocial, #btob.Try using Google and type in popular hashtags for your industry replacing your industry / market for the italics.
  • Make it easy to spell and remember. If it is too long and made up of too many words (e.g. #takingittothenextlevel) people will not remember or use it. It needs to be easy to spell spell and remember.

As an example you have the iconic #Movember campaign

3 – HOW TO SEARCH HASHTAGS ACROSS SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS?

The following tools can help you search across the different social media channels

A) – HOW TO SEARCH HASHTAGS WITH TAGBOARD

Tagboard allows you to search based on a hashtag and view conversations across multiple channels e.g. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Tagboard presents information in a user-friendly visual way that helps you to easily find text, video and image posts that are associated with the hashtag. You can also filter based on the channel e.g. Facebook, Twitter…

To view content related to a hashtag, you just enter the hashtag you are interested in.

B) – How To Search Hashtags with REBELMOUSE

RebelMouse is another hashtag tool that is great for running cross-platform campaigns.

Rebelmouse allows you to search hashtag conversations across social media channels and also gives you the ability to share posts, moderate as well as integrate Google Analytics.

 

C) – HOW TO SEARCH HASHTAGS WITH BUNDLEPOST

Bundle Post like Rebelmouse has a full suite of tools to manage your social media campaigns. Bundlepost lets you organize, schedule and post content for across multiple social media channels. It identifies popular keywords in your content and automatically replaces those words with hashtags. After you type these keywords into the Bundle Feed, it finds relevant, related content for you!

D) – HOW TO SEARCH HASHTAGS WITH RITETAG

RiteTag is a hashtag tool that finds the best possible hashtags for your post, then analyses them to let you create a library of hashtags to use.

To make publishing easier, RiteTag has an extension you can add to your web browser. Use the extension to schedule updates with your optimized hashtags from wherever you are.

E) – HOW TO SEARCH HASHTAGS WITH KEYHOLE

Keyhole provides real-time analytics for hashtags across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Enter the hashtag and then simply select the social media channels you want to monitor.

You will then be presented with an overview of the hashtag.

4 – SUMMARY

By using the right hashtag search tools you can make it easy to manage and maintain a focus on key hashtags during your social media campaigns.

The tools above can help you launch, track and analyze hashtags across social media channels. You can quickly understand what is working, what is not and the level of engagement and reach.

How do you use hashtag searches? Have you tried any of these tools? Share your experiences and opinions in the comments below.

Want to keep up with the latest figures in social media? Visit the post on social media statistics.

Blank Form (#4)

Innovation is happening faster than ever, keep up with new ideas, tools and technologies.

Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top