Data Stories: 12 Tips to Track a Hashtag Campaign Effectively

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Data Stories: 12 Tips to Track a Hashtag
Campaign Effectively
By Kurt Weiss – March 31, 2015
184 0 17 48 0
To tell any story, you first need to have the facts straight first. To tell a story well, you need
to communicate those facts in the most compelling fashion possible.
As social marketers, we don’t lack the facts. With so many channels offering different ways
to engage and interact with your followers, there are social KPIs abound. The challenge lies in
turning those data points into analysis that provides insights and creates a coherent narrative


around your social activities.
Hashtag campaigns are excellent
ways to create new organic
conversations. Along with those
conversations however, comes an all
new data set to understand.
When approaching analysis of a hashtag campaign, it’s important to demonstrate how that
new conversation strengthens your brand’s social foundations and improves your
competitive position. In order to prove that value, the new KPIs your hashtag generated must
be reinforced by the larger social context of the brand, weaving a holistic story across earned
media, owned media, and your competition.
Here are 12 steps to effectively track your hashtag campaign and create a compelling
narrative around your success. For more insight, download our Complete Guide to
Measuring and Promoting Hashtags.
1. Track Mentions
Assessing the volume of hashtag mentions is important, but understanding the breakdown of
that activity by organic mentions, replies, and retweets is key. This will help you understand
whether the hashtag is spreading like wildfire or if there are a few key influencers driving the
conversation.
How to Promote and Measure Hashtag
Campaigns
Download

This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Activity Report shows trended usage of a hashtag or keyword broken into
Tweet types.
2. Identify Key Events
Use potential impressions to identify the most significant events in your campaign.

This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Activity Report shows trended potential impressions driven by a hashtag or
keyword, as well as the Tweets that drove the most impressions.
3. Identify Influencers
Nothing goes viral on it’s own. It’s important to identify the influencers who ushered the
conversation along, whether they’re a known brand ambassador or a fan showing their love.
This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Activity Report shows the top users engaging with a term based on a
number of factors.
4. Engaging the Right Audience
Utilize Klout Topics to better understand the interests and make up of the audience engaging
with you. What else are they interested in and how you can align those topics with your
brand message in future campaigns?

This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Audience Analysis Report shows the most popular Klout topics for any
Twitter account’s audience.
5. Own the Conversation
As marketers, we work to create conversation that will influence the perception of our
brands. What were the themes or goals you were hoping to align your brand with through
your hashtag campaign?
You can create a simple Share of Voice by monitoring your brand and any competitors
alongside mentions of that theme. For instance Hershey’s might set up a Share of Voice for
“Hersheys + chocolate” vs “Cadbury + chocolate” vs “Nestle + chocolate”. This should be in
place in advance of the campaign so you’re able to track the hashtag’s effect on the
conversation and its impact on your brand’s influence around the conversation.

This chart from Simply Measured’s Share of Influence Report shows the share of voice for several competitive terms.
6. Support Yourself
Make sure you understand the breakdown of engagement on your handle during the
campaign. If your owned tweets have been effective, we should start to see increased activity
during the campaign on your handle. What form is that taking? Retweets will help extend the
reach of your hashtag, but maybe you were hoping to start a conversation through @replies?

This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Account Report shows engagement types over time that a brand sees.
7. Layer on Sentiment
Staying relevant in the conversation is important, but to qualify the value of those mentions
add in sentiment analysis to show the hashtag has reflected positively on your brand.

This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Account Report with Sentiment shows a trended view of sentiment over
time.
8. Monitor Growth
You started the conversation, you engaged the right people to grow it, but did it generate
new followers interested to hear what else you have to say?

This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Account Report shows audience growth over time.
9. Put Engagement in Context
Nothing happens in a bubble. A hashtag campaign is a way to galvanize engagement around
your brand, but how did that compare to what your competitors were doing over the same
period?

This chart from Simply Measured’s Twitter Competitive Analysis Report shows the trended engagement of multiple
accounts.
10. Standing Ovation

This chart from the Simply Measured Twitter Competitive Analysis Report shows total engagement and engagement as
a percentage of followers for multiple accounts.
Total engagements tell an important story, but using a rate such as “engagement as % of
followers” adds a new layer. Why have followers at all if you’re unable to activate them?
Tracking engagement with this rate how well engaged your audience is and allows apples to
apples comparisons with larger or aspirational competition.
11. Outgrow the Competition
The race for followers is rarely neck and neck. Growth rates help track towards those larger
goals over time and you’ll see here the net affect of your hashtag efforts.

This chart from the Simply Measured Twitter Competitive Analysis Report shows total audience and follower growth
for multiple accounts.
12. Optimize Content
You asked your fans to share their voice through your hashtag, so what did they say and how
did they say it? Amalgamate top content from the campaign and learn from your followers
what makes a top post. Don’t stop there though. What was your own top post? What
engaged well for your competition over the same period?

This table from the Simply Measured Twitter Account Report shows the top performing content from a given period.
This is the story analysis should tell for any campaign your run. Your executives might want
the abridged version for their report, but no matter what makes the final slides, your job is
still to know the whole story and make each successive campaign better than the last.
Get everything you need to analyze the metrics that matter
How to Promote and

Kurt Weiss
How to Promote and
Measure Hashtag
Campaigns
Download

3 Comments Simply Measured 
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Join the discussion…
• Reply •
Nadya Rivera • 2 days ago
It's not just you... lol
△ ▽
• Reply •
Kurt Weiss • 2 days ago> Nadya Rivera
Good catch guys! I usually leave the math to my editor, but apparently he needs an extra hand to count past
10.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Joshua Soerjodibroto • 2 days ago
Is it just me, or did we skip number 5? LOL
Good stuff!
△ ▽
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