Instagram hashtag analysis checks the usage, popularity, and impact of hashtags. It aims to boost post visibility and engagement.
It can show you trending topics, audience likes, and hashtag strategy success. By tracking posts, engagement, and growth, you can learn which hashtags work best.
Instagram must be one of the most important parts of your hashtag tracking practices. However, too many hashtags make monitoring way difficult. Instagram analytics tools help you save time and energy by providing automatic tracking.
We’ll explore Instagram hashtag analysis in detail and teach you how to excel at it!
So, let’s start!
Table of Contents
Why Analyzing Instagram Hashtags is Important?
When competition is high and attention spans are fleeting, Instagram hashtag analytics serve as a compass. In other words, they help users guide toward meaningful engagement and growth.
Instagram hashtag analysis provides valuable data, enabling users to make better decisions. It helps maximize visibility and build a vibrant community around their brand or personal account.
The benefits of measuring your Instagram hashtag performance are many, but we narrowed the list down to the top five.
Targeted marketing
One of the best Instagram marketing tips is to promote your content through both popular and niche-centered hashtags. Both Hashtag types help you find your target audience, but most importantly they can make your posts reach the right people.
By analyzing these hashtag metrics carefully, you’ll find out more about the preferences and behaviors of your target audience.
Learning about audience demographics lets you fine-tune content to resonate with your ideal customers. For example, you can test which hashtag sparks more engagement and create a buzz around your products.
Trend analysis
How do Instagram users find trends on the platform?
Easy, hashtags!
Checking popular and trending Instagram hashtags gives you valuable insights into the pulse of the platform. So, in a way trends and hashtags go hand-in-hand to help brands capitalize on viral conversations.
Furthermore, by monitoring the performance of popular hashtags and analyzing their impact, you can optimize your content strategy accordingly. Thus, you can start creating more relevant posts that keep your audience engaged.
Tip: Keep in mind that Instagram trending topics don’t work like Twitter hashtags, which means they’re not visible on the platform. Hence, you might want to find a hashtag tracker tool to do the research for you.
Competitor analysis
Advanced analytics for Instagram hashtags can help you check out your competitors and even outperform them.
Monitoring the hashtag usage of your competition can lead you to new content ideas, emerging trends, and even brand collaboration possibilities. In other words, hashtags let you check what’s working and what doesn’t for brands with similar goals and target audiences.
Analyzing instagram hashtags gives you useful information on your competitor’s Instagram strategy or even identify new industry gaps.
Sometimes you can just let others test content ideas and check hashtag popularity to decide if you’re going to jump into trends.
Measure the success of hashtag campaigns
In general, Instagram analytics are vital in evaluating the success of hashtag campaigns.
They measure the effectiveness of promotional efforts, the success of influencer partnerships, and the impact of your social media reach.
Instagram hashtag data provide insights into how well your hashtags are resonating with your audience and driving engagement. Additionally, analyzing hashtag performance allows you to assess the correlation between specific hashtags and conversion rates.
By comparing different campaign hashtag performances, you can identify the most successful ones and replicate their strategies in future campaigns.
Focusing on the bigger picture of your performance will help you understand how to use Instagram hashtags to optimize your social media content strategy.
Measuring your online presence
Measuring your Instagram hashtag performance is vital for effectively evaluating your online presence. Tracking your own branded hashtags paints a clear picture of how well your social media posts resonate with your audience.
In fact, this process will help you understand what types of content really work for your brand. Take, for example, Instagram carousels —a popular content format. By analyzing Instagram metrics and hashtag performance, you gain valuable insights into the impact and visibility of this content type.
Tip: If you manage to create unique hashtags and turn them into viral trends, your brand awareness will skyrocket overnight.
What Instagram Hashtag Analytics Can Tell You?
There’s a large volume of social media metrics out there. But, how many of them can you really track with Instagram hashtag analytics?
Here are three popular metrics you can focus on when you track hashtag analytics for Instagram.
Reach
Instagram reach refers to the total number of unique users who have viewed your content within a specific timeframe. It provides insights into the actual audience size reached by your Instagram posts or hashtags.
Measuring Instagram reach is important for checking how well your hashtags are doing and how many people see your posts.
In fact, it’s stated that Instagram accounts with less than 5000 followers can increase their reach by 36% with hashtag usage. That percentage is smaller when talking about profiles with more followers.
By measuring the reach of your posts that include hashtags, you can evaluate hashtag strategies for reaching a broader audience. A high reach indicates that your hashtags are successfully expanding your content’s exposure to a larger pool of users. Contrarily, a low reach may indicate the need to optimize your hashtag selection or adjust your content strategy.
Engagement
Social media engagement refers to the level of active interaction and involvement that users have with your content. Instagram interaction means likes, comments, shares, and saves.
When it comes to measuring hashtag performance, Instagram engagement is a crucial metric. It provides valuable insights into how well your hashtags are resonating with your audience and driving meaningful interactions.
Hashtags show people that are interested in your content. Tracking branded hashtag usage and measuring likes, comments, and shares help you understand how interesting or relevant your posts are.
High engagement signifies that your hashtags are successfully capturing your audience’s attention and interest, fostering conversations, and encouraging participation. Contrarily, low engagement may indicate the need to upgrade your hashtag game or improve your content’s quality and relevance.
Source: Instagram
Bonus: Best Times to Post on Instagram for Better Engagement
Follower growth
Instagram follower growth refers to the increase in the number of followers on your account over a specific period. It indicates the rate at which your audience is expanding and the overall evolution of your Instagram presence.
Follower growth isn’t the first metric that comes to mind when you track hashtags on Instagram. However, it can give you an idea of how successfully can your hashtag strategy attract new audiences. For example, when monitoring a hashtag on Instagram, you can test its usage frequency and correlate data with follower growth.
A significant increase in follower count suggests that your hashtag is successfully attracting the attention of users and enticing them to follow your account.
This shows that your hashtag strategy resonates with your target audience, driving organic growth. Stagnant follower growth may indicate that your content and hashtag strategies aren’t enticing enough for people to follow your account. So, you need to try a different approach.
How to Track Hashtag Performance on Instagram?
Accessing Instagram hashtag analytics is easy. You can unlock hashtag data by logging in to the native app and clicking on “View Insights”. You can then track the metrics mentioned above and compare your performance to previous timeframes.
While Instagram hashtag search can be conducted free, there are certain limitations to it. For example, you can’t discover trending hashtags or perform sentiment analysis on Instagram posts that include branded hashtags.
Do you want a more detailed approach?
Then you have to turn to advanced tools to monitor social media, like Mentionlytics, that include intelligent Instagram hashtag analyzer features.
See how to track Instagram hashtags and measure their performance with Mentionlytics in 3 easy steps:
Step #1: Set up your account
If you haven’t already, create an account and add keywords for your brand name, competitors, and/or industry. Then, you’ll be able to access real time hashtag data and Instagram keyword analytics.
Step #2: Discover trending hashtags
Go to the platform’s Overview page, find all social channels aligned next to Filters, and choose Instagram as your channel.
Then move lower down to the Keyword Cloud and click on the Hashtags Only box. This will show you only hashtags that are related to your main keywords –of your brand, competitors, and industry.
That’s why it’s really important to add some marketing leads and keywords that are relevant to your niche. Because now you can discover what hashtags generate the most buzz around your market.
Moreover, SIA –our social intelligence advisor– can let you know which hashtags are trending right now and automatically decide which ones you should use based on your industry.
Step #3: Monitor your performance
Go to Mentions and click on Instagram Mentions to start analyzing your own posts.
Focus on reach, engagement, and follower growth. You can also correlate your data with sentiment analysis to evaluate the impact of your hashtag performance.
Luckily, Mentionlytics lets you use Boolean search to search multiple hashtags.
For example, you can use the word AND between a branded hashtag and an industry hashtag to limit your search.
Sound interesting? Sign up for a free Instagram hashtag analytics trial to enjoy the full package of our features!
Tips for Hashtag Strategy Optimization
Optimizing your hashtag strategy based on data analysis findings can significantly enhance your Instagram presence. Here are some valuable tips to consider:
- Analyze top-performing hashtags: Identify the hashtags that have generated the highest engagement, reach, and follower growth. These are indicators of successful hashtag usage.
- Refine hashtag relevance: Review the performance of individual hashtags to determine their effectiveness. If a hashtag consistently yields low engagement or reach, consider replacing it with more relevant and specific alternatives.
- Strike a balance between popular and niche hashtags: Using popular hashtags increases the likelihood of reaching a broader audience, but it also means facing more competition. Balancing popular hashtags with niche ones allows you to target a specific audience segment and potentially increase inner-community engagement.
- Monitor competitor hashtags: Analyze the hashtags your competitors are using and examine their performance. Consider incorporating successful hashtags into your own strategy, while also exploring unique hashtags to differentiate yourself.
- Test and iterate: Continuously test different combinations of hashtags and analyze their performance. Experiment with varying sets of hashtags, observing how they impact reach, engagement, and follower growth. Use the insights gained to refine and optimize your hashtag strategy over time.
Start Tracking Hashtags on Instagram
Whether you’re an influencer looking to expand your reach, a business aiming to strengthen your online presence, or simply an individual passionate about sharing your story, embracing Instagram hashtag analytics is the key to unlocking your true potential on the platform.
So, start monitoring your hashtag performance on Instagram. You can do that manually, by trying the native app’s free Instagram hashtag analytics. But based on previous experiences, monitoring tools, like Mentionlytics, offer more advanced Instagram hashtag popularity checker and hashtag tracker features.
Are you still wondering how to check hashtag performance on Instagram? Start your free Instagram hashtag tracking using Mentionlytics free trial for two weeks!
FAQ
What is the best hashtag analytics tool?
The best option is to use a social listening tool like Mentionlytics that can analyze hashtags. That way, you get two (and many more) features within one tool.
How to check banned hashtags on Instagram?
Instagram doesn’t offer a list of banned hashtags, but they do exist. The problem is that you can use them without knowing they’re banned. You would eventually find that when your content is shadowbanned. To avoid this, check each hashtag before using it through the Explore function (Tags tab) or with a third-party tool. If you’re using the Instagram native feature, check if there are recent posts or reels with that hashtag. If the last one was in 2020, you should avoid using it.
How do you see hidden hashtags on Instagram?
If the hashtags are hidden for a visual reason (to look more aesthetically pleasing), you can see them by expanding the caption or checking the first comment. But if the hashtags are hidden due to shadowbanning, there’s no way you can see them.
How to check hashtag performance on Instagram?
You can check your hashtag performance under Impressions/From Hashtags, but only if you have a high engagement rate. If not, these insights are not available to you. That’s important if you’re just starting out and driving without a clear direction. However, using Mentionlytics’ hashtag analytics lets you easily get your insights, regardless of your engagement.
