7 steps to successful TikTok hashtag analytics

TikTok offers a massive marketing opportunity for businesses worldwide. As thousands more companies start to market across the platform, grasping how TikTok analytics work can help you create content that gives you an upper hand over the competition.

Standing out on TikTok is easier said than done. The platform’s unique emphasis on short-form videos means your marketing strategies have to grab attention on a crowded platform immediately.

But cracking the engagement code can be groundbreaking, as TikTok boasts the highest average engagement rate and the 5th largest number of users of any social platform. The trick is to make sure the right people see your content. One key way to do this is to understand how TikTok hashtags work, and how you can analyze them.

Read on to find out why TikTok hashtag analytics is one of the most useful ways to track your success, and learn how to use hashtags to supercharge your account’s performance.

Why you should track your TikTok hashtag analytics

TikTok hashtags can be a game-changer ​for your TikTok marketing strategy. They help you amplify your content reach, learn about your audience and boost community engagement by connecting your audience to trending topics and niche interests. As on other networks, you can add several key TikTok hashtag phrases to your posts.

Let’s dig into the key benefits.

Discoverability

Hashtags add a whole new way for audiences to find your content. TikTok’s algorithm uses hashtags to categorize videos, so including them in your content improves your chances of trending or reaching the right people on their For You Page (FYP). It’s also helpful when users click on or search for these hashtags to find interesting topics.

A recent example of hashtags boosting discoverability is the video game Minecraft. Minecraft just celebrated its 15th anniversary, and #minecraft became one of TikTok’s most popular hashtags.

As users posted with the hashtag, interest in the game and its content on TikTok grew. This created a snowball effect for the topic as more people found, engaged and created their own content with the hashtag.

Once you add hashtags to your posts, anyone searching for those hashtags can see your specific posts. This helps you organically attract more followers for your account, particularly if you tag posts with the top hashtags on TikTok.

This proves why using hashtags is vital, but tracking and analyzing these trending hashtags gives you even more insight and optimization potential.

Tracking helps you identify which hashtags are over-saturated and which provide niche opportunities with less competition and more engagement potential. Create a regularly updated bank of reliable hashtags that stand a better chance of helping your content trend and reach the right audience.

Understanding your audience

TikTok hashtag analytics help you better understand who your audience is. Returning to the Minecraft example, we can see the hashtag’s audience is mostly users aged 18-24 who are also interested in video games, cosplay‌ and comics.

This shows how hashtag metrics can give you insights into audience interests, which you can then use to create targeted content.

Finding engagement patterns

Engagement is vital on TikTok, as the more engagements your post receives, the wider it circulates. Because hashtags get your posts in front of more people, you have more opportunities to engage your audience—and more data available to track behavior patterns.

Figure out how your audience prefers to engage, and how you can encourage them to connect with your brand by analyzing these hashtag patterns.

Measuring campaign performance

Apply your hashtag metrics to the goals of each of your TikTok marketing campaigns and measure their performance.

Conducting this analysis at the end of your campaigns shows you which parts of your strategy are working and which aren’t. You can then build on these insights to create more successful campaigns in the future.

How to analyze hashtags on TikTok

TikTok’s native analytics have certain metrics for hashtag performance, including trending sounds, views and engagement.

Hashtags on TikTok are listed as a traffic source to find out where your viewers come from. This shows you how many viewers you’ve gained from specific hashtags, and which hashtags are performing well for your content.

Follow these seven steps to use TikTok hashtag analytics to boost the reach and results of your campaigns.

1. Use Trend Discovery on TikTok to find relevant hashtags

Find out which hashtags are the most popular on the platform through Trend Discovery in TikTok’s Creative Center for businesses.

Trend Discovery’s hashtag page gives you a ranked list of the most popular hashtags across the past week, month or three months. Rankings show you several data points for each hashtag including posts, view counts‌ and a trend graph over time.

Certain hashtags can also have a Topic tag like News and Entertainment, Apparel & Accessories or Games. Improve your chances of trending with your target audience by searching for and using the leading hashtags related to your brand’s main topic.

2. Identify hashtag metrics worth tracking

Before you start tracking hashtag metrics, you need to figure out what data to focus on. The right metrics for each of your campaigns will depend on your initial goals.

For example, if you’re creating campaigns designed to build trust, you’ll want to use hashtags that spark positive conversations online. Meanwhile, if you’re trying to get more followers, you’ll want to use hashtags with a higher volume and reach.

Some common examples of useful metrics when tracking your TikTok hashtag analytics include:

• Mention volume, the number of posts using your hashtag
• Views, or the number of unique users seeing content with specific hashtags
• Conversations happening around a specific hashtag
• Engagement with posts using a hashtag
• Demographic information to identify regional popularity and audience age ranges

3. Understand the different types of hashtags

Make sure you understand the different types of hashtags on TikTok to accurately analyze hashtag performance. Some of these are:

• Competition or giveaway hashtags, designed so users can enter competitions through comments or posts
• Location hashtags, used to speak to audiences in certain locations
• Event hashtags, used to promote content across certain events
• Campaign hashtags, unique hashtags designed to promote a certain TikTok campaign
• Branded hashtags, promoting a certain brand or product line
• Trending hashtags, which represent popular topics
• Community hashtags, which identify certain groups of people on TikTok who often appreciate the same type of content

Note that your success metrics differ across each hashtag type.

For example, competition hashtags will aim to get you enhanced engagement, and trending hashtags will give you a wide reach.

4. Determine your audience size

Hashtag analysis helps you figure out the size of your audience across TikTok.

A reliable way to do this is to create a unique brand or campaign hashtag. For example, Coca-Cola’s #shareacoke campaign.

This campaign resulted in over 52k unique posts across TikTok. But brands can track the hashtags in more detail to see overall post volume, total views and trends over time. This proves campaign reach, which shows how large an audience is for these campaign types across the whole platform.

5. Connect online and offline campaigns

Even though TikTok hashtag analytics are mainly an online form of tracking, they can be used to assess the performance of IRL activations if applied effectively. To do this, you’ll first need to create a unique hashtag for your campaign and then track its usage and engagement rate.

A historic example of this is Disney’s #shareyourears campaign. This was held in 2016, so it pre-dates TikTok’s popularity, but its impact can still be felt on the platform today.

Disney encouraged people to share photos of themselves in Mickey Mouse ears with the hashtag #shareyourears, and Disney then donated to charity for each post. They combined a hashtag with user-generated content and an activation offline—donations to an organization that mattered to the brand. The success of this campaign could easily be tracked with the reach and mention volume of their specific hashtag.

6. Conduct competitive analysis

Applying hashtag insights to competitive analysis helps you better understand how well you’re performing against your competition.

Consider the long-standing friendly rivalry between McDonald’s and Burger King. At the moment, 2.7 million unique posts have been created on TikTok with the branded hashtag #mcdonalds, compared to just over 380k for #burgerking.

This shows that more people create content about McDonald’s, giving them a far stronger reach on TikTok overall. Analyzing your competitors like this reveals new strategies and differentiation opportunities that weren’t considered before.

Use the hashtag search function to surface all the posts and conversations happening around your brand’s hashtag compared to your competitors. Looking at posts using specific hashtags gives you qualitative details to understand conversations happening around your brand and your competition, plus your share of voice in the market.

7. Track your overall TikTok engagement performance

Hashtag performance through the lens of your TikTok engagement stats reveals how different hashtags boost engagement on your posts. On TikTok, this engagement is usually in the form of likes, shares, saves and comments.

In a tool like Sprout, you can use the Post Performance Report for TikTok to see what hashtags are used in your Top Posts, and to see how your audience engaged with those specific posts. Or, you can use the Cross-Network Post Performance Report to view top-performing posts across all networks—including TikTok. Then you can get a deeper view of hashtag performance across all the content you publish.

All engagements aren’t equal, so determine your engagement goals and metrics at the start of each hashtag campaign.

Experiment with your hashtags and continue to track Top Posts, filtered by engagement metrics, to see what hashtags, if any, routinely appear in your Top Posts. This will determine which hashtags you should rely on moving forward.

Start using your TikTok hashtag analytics effectively

Tracking metrics is often the best way to learn what is and isn’t working with your digital marketing. Effectively learning from your hashtag insights should open up new opportunities for more successful TikTok marketing campaigns.

Download Sprout’s social metrics map, to define the right metrics across each stage of your sales funnel.

TikTok Hashtags Analytics FAQs

Q: How can I track hashtags on TikTok?

A: You can track hashtags natively through TikTok, and find trending hashtags through TikTok Discovery.

Q: How do I get TikTok hashtag data?

A: Get data on specific hashtags throughout the whole TikTok platform by searching for the hashtag you want to see in TikTok’s search bar, or by using the hashtag section of the Trends Discovery tool in TikTok.

Q: What is TikTok hashtag analysis?

A: TikTok hashtag analysis is a way to gain insights from specific hashtags. You can find out how often it’s used, the sentiments behind it, how much engagement it encourages‌ and more.