5 Hashtag Tracking Tools for Twitter, Facebook and Beyond

Are you using hashtags in your social media campaigns?

Do you want to find tools to help manage your hashtags?

The right tools can help you launch, track and analyze hashtags across social networks.

In this article, you’ll discover five tools that make it easy to track hashtags and their related conversations.

Why Use a Hashtag?

Hashtags make it easier for people to find and follow discussions about brands, events and promotions. They also let brands track the performance of promotions across social media.

Hashtags can determine how easily you can target and track a campaign. You’ve probably seen many businesses use generic hashtags like #food or #chocolate. While these will get your update into a large conversation, using such broad hashtags is wasting your time.

Can you imagine how many posts (tweets or otherwise) contain #chocolate every minute? Managing the hashtag would be a nightmare. You’d spend weeks sorting through every instance of the hashtag to determine which mentions apply to you.

It’s worth the effort (and your sanity) to come up with a unique hashtag that fits with your particular campaign.

A good example is Subway’s #januANY campaign. Their hashtag has two key components: it’s distinctive enough to track easily and it’s simple for fans to remember.

Subway uses hashtags that are memorable and easy to track.

As you’re choosing a hashtag, follow Subway’s lead. A good hashtag is memorable, unique and relevant to your campaign.

Following those guidelines, you’ll find it’s much easier to keep track of how many people are participating in your campaign and spreading the word.

Read on to discover five tools that can effectively track, analyze and report how others are using your hashtag.

#1: RebelMouse: Embed Your Campaign on Your Website

RebelMouse is your best friend if you’re running a cross-platform campaign.

Not only does it fetch hashtag conversations happening anywhere on social media, it also offers integrated Google Analytics, social sharing, RSS feeds and content moderation.

Add to that a custom domain feature with customizable designs and CSS capabilities that let you embed RebelMouse on your website, and you have a one-stop shop for your social storytelling.

RebelMouse is your social media front page.

Burger King’s #SATISFRIED campaign used RebelMouse to pull hashtagged Instagram photos into their website and show off how fans were being satisfried.

RebelMouse embedded on the Burger King website.

Having people share the hashtag provided social proof for friends of friends and helped Burger King reach a wider audience.

#2: Tagboard: Get the Complete Conversation

Tagboard gathers text, video and image posts to give you an overall picture of what’s being said around a hashtag.

After grabbing relevant conversations from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Vine, Tagboard puts them in a user-friendly interface where you can interact with the results.

Tagboard lets you track hashtags across multiple platforms.

Audi used Tagboard to track their Super Bowl ad for #Bravery in 2013. They were able to pull in tweets, Facebook mentions and Instagram mentions.

Audi has been using hashtags with their Super Bowl ads since 2011.

#3: Talkwalker: Analyze Hashtag Campaigns

Talkwalker is more than a hashtag tracking tool. Its capabilities go far beyond letting you listen to and engage with conversations around hashtags.

Talkwalker gives you data for gender distribution, geographic distribution and sentiment analysis on your own hashtags, as well as your competitors’ hashtags.

Track more than mentions—get key demographics with Talkwalker.

All the data are easily filtered, sorted, analyzed and charted using their tool. The insights can be seamlessly exported into Excel, PowerPoint and Word so you can manage and present results easily.

#4: Bundle Post: Generate Hashtags Automatically

Bundle Post is a very useful content management system that lets you generate, organize, schedule and post content for hashtag campaigns. It also integrates with HootSuite, HubSpot, Buffer and other systems.

Bundle Post automatically generates hashtags for you.

This tool has a specialized feature that identifies popular keywords in your content and automatically replaces those words with hashtags. After you type these keywords and phrases into the Bundle Feed feature, it goes out and finds relevant, related content for you!

#5: RiteTag: Find the Perfect Hashtag

RiteTag optimizes updates for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ with the best possible hashtags for your post, then analyzes 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.

Bonus Tools Just for Twitter

Tweet Binder and Twubs are specialized Twitter tools for analytics and filtering conversations, respectively.

Tweet Binder lets you enter a hashtag, then provides an in-depth report of actual conversations, retweets, associated images and links based on your hashtag. Once you get the results, you can categorize your findings by influencers, contributors or other media filters.

Tweet Binder gives you a custom ranking feature for events.

Twubs acts as a live stream for Twitter chats. It has been known to be more real-time than Twitter itself! If a hashtag conversation is moving too quickly for you, just hit the Pause button to catch up.

Use Twubs to track your hashtags in real time.

Over to you

From Google+ and Facebook to Pinterest and LinkedIn, hashtags are everywhere these days.
With the right tools, hashtags make it easier for brands to manage and maintain social media campaigns.

The tools above can help you launch, track and analyze hashtags across social networks. You can see what’s working and what’s not, how big your reach is and even how you compare to your competition. I’d say that’s pretty handy.

What do you think? What do you use to keep track of your hashtags? Have you tried any of these tools? How have they worked for you? Share your experiences and opinions in the comments below.

10 Tips to Be Successful on LinkedIn

LinkedIn launched on May 5, 2003 (on my mother’s birthday) and currently has 277 million members — with two new people creating accounts every second.

Here are updated LinkedIn statistics to impress your boss or your mom.

I joined LinkedIn in February 2007 and I’ve actively used it over the years both as a consumer and a teacher. I’d like to think this makes me somewhat of an expert on how to use the professional networking site.

Whether you are on LinkedIn as a job seeker, a job recruiter, or to further your professional development, I want to share advice how you can be successful.

1. Keep your profile updated.

This is most important — as 40% of LinkedIn users visit the site every day.

If I search for your name on Google, Bing, or some other search engine, your profile link will appear in the top 5 results. If you share a common name like John Smith, you’re in the top 20 results. Don’t be outdated or inactive.

There is a correlation between the frequency of your updates and the frequency of search engines indexing it. If you never update your profile, your search rank will decrease.

2. Fill your profile with keywords and colorful language.

Your resume does not belong here. You can echo the titles but you want to expand on your bullet points, perhaps writing complete sentences or longer paragraphs. Tell your story — why you joined the company, what you did, why you left.

Your headline (the bold-formatted words underneath your name that follows you around the site) should be a description of who you are and not a mirror of your job title. There is a difference between John Smith the Veterinarian Technician and John Smith the Animal Care Specialist. Be the latter.

My current headline is Digital PR Strategist + Speaker.

3. Write a summary that supports your experience and education.

This is where your so-called cover letter goes. Write for the world to see.
You are limited to 2,000 words; but most summaries I see are under 200 words. The site enables you to type any character such as wingdings.

My summary starts with a brief snapshot of why I’m on LinkedIn (looking for a specific job opportunity), followed by highlights from my past, and ending with my contact information. I tell my story through the use of dashes, ellipses, and checkmarks.

4. Write in first person, not third.

Unless you introduce yourself in third person at job interviews, cocktail hours, and networking mixers, write your summary and experience sections with first person pronouns.

There are good examples of profiles in third person but I prefer reading about someone in her own words as if she’s describing herself to me on the phone.

5. Upload a current headshot as your photograph.

Ensure your photo is from the past year or two. Don’t display old photos to represent you on LinkedIn. Again, think of that cocktail party and show me the real you.

6. Participate in groups.

There are 2 million LinkedIn groups that you can join to connect with like-minded professionals in your industry.

You are limited to being a member of 50 groups. You can’t join more without leaving others. Though, the average person belongs to 7 groups.

There is a correlation between how much you participate and how much you get back. For instance, I’ve received job offers as the direct result of answering questions on groups about social media and PR.

7. Be smart about connection requests.

You shouldn’t connect to strangers. One benchmark to use is whether or not you can recommend the person. If you can write a recommendation off the cuff, say yes to the connection; else, ignore that person for someone who you can recommend.

I used to accept connection requests from people who commented on my blog and from people I randomly met at conferences. But because neither of us kept in touch, I gradually forgot their relevance and could no longer recommend them.

Moreover, they couldn’t recommend me when I asked for help connecting to others. This led me to unfriend over 2,000 people over the past year. I’m connected to 370 people today. Here’s a blog post I wrote about that bulk unfollowing.

Say yes to former high school classmates because chances are they are memorable enough in your head to remember them. Say yes to work colleagues. Maybe you know your neighbors, too. You never know who is connected to someone you need to know — and therein lies the point of LinkedIn.

8. Recommend your connections.

Whether your friend is a college classmate, colleague, coworker, etc., there should be a reason you two are connected.

I don’t refer to endorsements — those bobbleheads of people who think you’re a skilled expert.
Recommendations are mini testimonials that others can read why you like and respect your connection.

9. Ask your connections to recommend you. 

Some job employers will automatically refuse candidates with less than so many recommendations. Fact is, if you don’t ask you’ll never know.

Keep in mind that some people will reciprocate a recommendation to you if you are proactive and write them one first.

10. Be a person, not a robot.

“I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” is the default message I see if you send me a connection request without customizing the message. That line is meaningless unless I know you well. Nine times out of ten, I’m replying to the person asking who she is or why she sent me a request.

It’s worse when she doesn’t have an uploaded photo — because I’m a visual person and photos help me remember people I met.

Change the default message and personalize it.

Tell me why you want to add me to your network.

These are my tips. What are yours?

Add a comment below and share with me and other readers.

Here is a link to my LinkedIn profile if you know an organization needing someone with my digital PR and community relations skills. Thanks.

LinkedIn Member Blocking: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

LinkedIn Announces Member Blocking: This new LinkedIn member blocking feature will be rolled out to all LinkedIn members.

Use the drop-down menu to block or report a LinkedIn member.

LinkedIn Redesigns Who’s Viewed Your Profile: “Packed with new visual analytics and actionable insights designed to give you more ways to manage your professional identity and increase your visibility across LinkedIn.”

You will now have “access to more data-driven insights such as the industry your viewers work in, the keyword searches that led to your profile, how they found you and new insights including what regions they live in, what profession they are in and what company they work for.”

Facebook Shows Stories Around Topics You Like: “Now, when a page tags another page, (Facebook) may show the post to some of the people who like or follow the tagged page.”

“For example, this post by the Bleacher Report might be shown in the news feed to people who follow or like Dwight Howard, in addition to people who follow or like the Bleacher Report.”

Twitter Introduces Promoted Accounts in Search: “With this launch, relevant promoted accounts can be presented to users in search results along with recommendations of people to follow.”

Twitter will “automatically select relevant search queries for presenting promoted accounts based on an advertiser’s targeting choices, so no additional action is required for your business to access this capability.”

YouTube Reveals New Look: “You’ll see some changes to make it easier to find what you want to watch on YouTube and collect playlists to watch again and again.”

“YouTube now has a center-aligned look, fitting neatly on any screen size, and feeling similar to the mobile apps you’re spending almost half of your YouTube time with.”

Facebook Introduces New Campaign Structure: On March 4, Facebook is “rolling out a new campaign structure that will make it easier for advertisers of every size to organize, optimize and measure their ads.”

“The new campaign structure will be reflected worldwide across all ad interfaces, including the Ads Create Tool, Ads Manager and Power Editor, as well as third-party ad interfaces built by preferred marketing developers.”

Facebook Improves Core Audience Targeting Options: The targeting features built into their ad-buying interface will start to roll out, “allowing advertisers around the world to reach precise audiences based on four main targeting types: location, demographic, interests and behaviors.”

“Facebook’s targeting features are becoming simpler and even more powerful.”

Facebook Makes Changes to @Facebook.com Email Addresses: “Soon any email messages that are sent to your @facebook.com email address will no longer go to your Facebook messages. Instead, these emails will be forwarded to the primary email on your Facebook account.”

Here’s an interesting infographic worth noting:

The Year of the Social Small Business from LinkedIn:

“94% of survey respondents who use social media said they use it for marketing, and 3 in 5 say social solves for the core business challenge of attracting new customers.”

Other Mentions

Introducing Social Media Marketing World:

60+ pros help you master social media marketing! Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author of Platform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author of Launch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner’s mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.

 Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.