Of course. There are two main ways to count the number of tweets posted with a specific hashtag. The first method is free and will work well if you need data for an obscure hashtag with few posts.
The second is a paid method but it’s much easier and would give you data beyond the number of posts such as impressions, reach, demographics of users, etc. It involves the use of a tool called Keyhole - A Social conversation tracker
I’ll start by explaining method 1:
- If the hashtag in question has only been used a few times, you can type it into the Twitter search box and manually count the number of posts returned by Twitter.
Although this may work for a hashtag with 10’s of Tweets, it quickly becomes impractical when you’re trying to get data for a hashtag with 100’s of Tweets. If you’re using an obscure hashtag, follow these steps. - Search for the hashtag on Twitter using the Twitter search box located on the top right side of the Twitter header navigation bar.
b. On the search results page, the posts will be ranked by engagement rate. If you want to see all posts in the order they were created, select “Live” from the options bar.
2. The second method involves the use of a social media listening tool. It’s not free but the data you will receive back is invaluable.
Keyhole’s Social listening application collects 100% of posts you’re tracking from Twitter (and other social media channels). It allows you to count hashtags , analyzes the data in an easy to read dashboard and feeds you updates in real-time.
There’s also a streaming page, ex. Audi’s streaming page, that tab can be used to see and play with the raw data. In the streaming tab you’ll see a list of all the tweets gathered from Twitter.
The list can be sorted based on the sentiment, engagement rate, or can be filtered based on keywords in the bio of the author or their geo location.
You can also engage directly with those posts within Keyhole, a feature which is useful if you want to do some customer relationship management within the tool.
It saves time when you’re able to sort the tweets by sentiment and quickly respond to tweets with highly negative sentiment. This is what the streaming tab looks like; You can also click here to see a live example tracking Audi.
Some other tools with similar features: Radian6 , Socialmention, Socialbakers
Keyhole gives you more options by combining a couple of useful tools into one.
It has also another tab called Influencers; The influencer tab contains a list of all the authors creating tweets with your hashtag. That list can be sorted based on the most engaged authors (the number of times they used the hashtag), which is great for picking the winner for a contest that requires a hashtag to be used a set number of times.
It’s also great for picking out influencers who frequently tweet with your hashtag of interest. You can also sort the influencers list by the number of engagement and reach they generate. You can click here to see a live list of influencers for Audi.
The last tab is known as the media tab. The media tab is a collection of all the photos and videos people used when tweeting with your hashtag. It’s sorted by engagement rate and can be quick way to look through the images and videos used by your fans or event attendees. This is what the media tab looks like; You can click here to see a live media page for Audi.
Although there’s a free way to count hashtags on Twitter or other social media platforms, the free method is too time consuming and not worth the effort of manually scrolling and counting. Tools like Keyhole have made the process much simpler, more accurate, and enjoyable at an affordable rate. You can click here to try the tool.