How to Use Hashtags to Increase Your Campaign Reach

39% of businesses do not track their social campaigns and it’s leading to missed opportunities. I’ll show you how to effectively track hashtags during events, and methods you can use to build a wide-reaching campaign. I will focus on two things:

1. The important metrics you should be prepared to measure when you run a hashtag campaign
2. Simple tricks you can use to generate a wider reach

Important Social Campaign Metrics

Most social campaigns are designed to build awareness rather than drive immediate conversions. With this in mind, you’ll have to be clear about the goal of your campaign and the metrics you need to track in order to judge success.

Using Keyhole’s account trackers, you will be able to track a baseline of these metrics before and after you run your hashtag campaign.

Follower growth and average engagement rate help you measure the lasting impact your hashtag campaign has on both existing and newly-gained community members.

Why is Follower Growth a Key Social Campaign Metric?

Follower growth is a marker for the reach of the campaign you choose to run. It demonstrates that your campaign was able to reach users who were not already connected to your brand.

To properly measure the impact of your campaign, log the average rate of growth in the weeks prior to the event. Then, log the average daily growth after the event.

A successfully-promoted event should show an upwards trending follower growth rate during these periods.

Meanwhile, engagement rate quantifies the effectiveness of your message. If the message you and your fans are pushing is compelling, you should see an increase in the average engagement rate on your owned account.

This metric is also an indication that you’ve built a targeted following through the hashtag campaign.

How Do You Track Follower Growth?

You can manually track the metrics by keeping a spreadsheet you update each week. You would have to log follower changes, plus weekly engagement rate before the event. Since you can only keep track of one account for each of Twitter’s built-in analytics dashboard, this method can be time-consuming.

It will also leave you in the dark if you have brand ambassadors helping you promote the campaign — you would have to scroll through each of their Twitter feeds to collect engagement metrics when they push your message.

You can automate the process by using a social media analytics tool such as Keyhole.

With Keyhole, you can track multiple accounts in one place. The platform tracks follower growth before and after your campaign, monitoring the effectiveness of your ambassadors.

It’s important to track your account metrics before the campaign and post-campaign to learn what worked, and what didn’t work and to find the message that resonates with your newfound audience.

What Metrics Should You Track Directly To Gauge The Impact Of Your Hashtag Campaigns?

Measuring the effectiveness of a hashtag campaign would be impossible without social media tools like Keyhole. Twitter’s native analytics program allows you to track self-produced content but does not give you access to how the hashtags or keyword you’re promoting propagates across the platform.

Metrics to keep an eye on during your campaign:

• Reach – the number of unique people who may see your posts.
• Impressions – the total number of potential views (including same users seeing the same post multiple times)
• Exposure – measures the total Impressions that a user has generated, including the impressions generated by their Retweeters
• Influencer engagement rate – measures the engagement generated on posts created by people engaging with your hashtag or keyword. This is the metric that allows you to optimize your campaign and increase your brand exposure, by reaching out to influencers with  high engagement rate, you will be able to reach a broader audience in your target market.

Here’s a preview of Keyhole’s Reach and Impressions Analytics:

Since Twitter does not provide exact account metrics to Third Party tools, the reach and Impressions calculated are based on the number of timelines on which the posts showed up. This number is called potential impressions. The real impressions can be anywhere from 3% – 13% of the potential impressions depending on factors such as time of post, keyword, and follower activity.

Simple Tricks to Generate Wider Campaign Reach

Prior to starting your campaign, use a hashtag and keyword tracker to follow broad industry topics related to your event. After a few days, you should start to see the accounts that receive the most engagement in your industry.

Reach out to these people and invite them to participate in your campaign when it starts.

Use the account tool to track your account and that of competitors. This would allow you to find your best-performing content and posting times. Optimize your messaging around content and phrasing which performs best with your audience. Incorporate hashtags that have performed well historically within your campaign.

Pro Tip: when recruiting influencers, look for people who receive 10 or more engagements per relevant post.

Disclosure: We have a referral engagement with Keyhole.