Socially Conscious: Learn about shoppers via hashtagsSocially Conscious: Learn about shoppers via hashtags

Last month, we covered when and how to use hashtags. The obvious follow-up question is the subject of this month’s column: After you use hashtags, how do you track them?

Let’s say you’re running a contest with a unique hashtag. To find all instances of that hashtag on all social media networks, you could spend time searching each network or parsing together data from various websites that may or may not accurately capture hashtag data. In the end you’d have a number, but that number wouldn’t tell you much about the people who used your hashtag.

Save yourself time and enhance your consumer insights by using two useful and powerful hashtag tracking services: Keyhole and Tagboard. (I’m not paid to mention these services—I just like them.)

Keyhole

This website allows you to track hashtags (as well as keywords and URLs) that are mentioned on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Test-drive Keyhole by searching for one hashtag at keyhole.co/hashtag-analytics. The resulting report will show you posts, users, reach, influential users (and links to their profiles), demographics, location of the activity and what devices people used, among other insights into your shoppers.

If you’d like to continually track activity or pull historical data, Keyhole offers paid ways to do so. This paid service might be worth your while if you’re running large hashtag contests or ongoing listening campaigns on multiple social networks.

Tagboard

This service aggregates social media hashtag data from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Vine and others into a Pinterest-esque board. On this board, you can interact with each social post. From liking, favoriting and commenting, your tagboard is a one-stop shop for streamlining your responses on social media surrounding a specific hashtag.

Attending a conference or hosting an event? Show a tagboard with your hashtag that will update in near real time. Bonus: You can customize tagboards with imagery and a description to match your event or brand. Try the service for free by visiting tagboard.com.

Pricing is comparable to Keyhole and both offer a unique spin on hashtag tracking, so be sure to try out both before you commit. The value of hashtag tracking in this way is that you gain insight into who’s engaging with you on social media, which can go a long way toward strengthening your overall social media marketing strategy.