Tutorial: Tracking Hashtags with Hashtracking

Following and tracking hashtags with Hashtracking is fast and easy. It only takes about five minutes to sign up and get started with one of our Free Trial or paid plans.

Since our service works differently from others, we thought we’d share a quick tutorial to assist you in getting up and running speedily. Here’s how to follow hashtags with Hashtracking, in three easy steps. Scroll to the end for a handy “cheat sheet”.

Tracking Hashtags STEP ONE: Follow a Hashtag!

The first thing you will do after establishing your account is follow a hashtag.

• Following a hashtag is not the same as setting up a report. You’ll do that in step two.
• Hashtracking does not search back in time. You must already be following a tag to generate reports.
• Your data is always pulled “fresh” from the streaming API, and not from the filtered Search API. This ensures the highest degree of accuracy possible.

Following is a concept that is familiar to most Twitter users. When you follow a Twitter user or list, their tweets show up in your stream. When you follow a hashtag with Hashtracking, you collect all the tweets that use that hashtag.

IMPORTANT: Collection begins the minute you start following, so the sooner you start, the better.

To Follow a Hashtag:

1. Visit the My Hashtags page of your account and click to “Add Hashtag”.
2. Don’t worry about the start and end time of your Twitter event, chat, or campaign when setting up a hashtag to follow. You’ll set specific start and end times when you create reports later.
3. We recommend, in most cases, that you click the “start collecting immediately” button when you initially set up your hashtags.

Tracking Hashtags STEP TWO: Create and Share your Reports

Once you are following a hashtag, and collecting tweet data, you are free to slice and dice that data at will. You can look at any time period – minutes, hours, days, weeks or months worth of data. There is no limit to the number of reports you can create. Even after you are no longer actively following a hashtag, you can go back and create reports from the Analytics data you have collected.

To create a Hashtag Report:

1. Go to the Hashtag’s Analytics page and set date and time parameters in the upper right hand corner.
2. Click on the “Apply” button to apply the time/date ranges you have selected
3. Click on “Create Report” to create a report with the selected time/date range.
4. Hashtag Reports with a public URL can be shared via the web, and will update in real time. Be sure to check off the “public” button when creating a report if you wish to share via public URL.

Pro Plan customers have additional powerful report customization and sharing options to choose from. These options include:

• Spam filtering
• Auto-refreshing “Public Display Mode” report for event organizers and chat hosts. Public display reports display transcript and overview charts, without sharing more detailed report analytics (that some users prefer to keep private.)
• Pro plan users can also choose to export report data as a CSV file for sharing or use in their internal reports.

Tracking Hashtags STEP 3: De-Activating your Hashtags

Hashtracking plans are calculated based on the max number of hashtags you are actively tracking at the same time. If you have a maximum of 5 Hashtags per your plan, and wish to follow another, you can either upgrade your plan or cease following (deactivate) one of the hashtags you are following.

Hashtags can be deactivated temporarily, or permanently deleted. Choose carefully as once a hashtag is permanently deactivated, the data cannot be retrieved.

Temporary deactivation:

If you no longer wish to follow a hashtag, but you wish to keep the data and/or think you might want to resume following the same hashtag at a later date, you can deactivate the hashtag by visting the My Hashtags Page

1. Find the hashtag you wish to halt collection on and click “Edit Hashtag”
2. Toggle the switch from “active” to “inactive”.

Inactive Hashtags do not count against your monthly subscription limits and their data will be stored. To resume collecting data on a tag, you can toggle the switch back to “active”.

Permanent deletion:

If you not wish to keep the data or resume following a hashtag, you can delete that hashtag from your console permanently by visiting the My Hashtags page and clicking on the “Edit Hashtag” button and choosing “delete hashtag”.

Please note, once deleted, your data cannot be retrieved.

Hashtracking “Cheat Sheet” 4 Helpful Tips to Remember

• In most cases it is not necessary to select start times when you add a hashtag.* To get started quickly, simply check the “start following immediately” box when adding a hashtag.
• In order to look at the activity during specific time periods, for any hashtags you follow, create reports. You can create as many as you like!
• As soon as you know you would like to follow a hashtag, set the tag up. Do not wait until your event is about to start or has already started. Hashtracking cannot track backwards.
• To stop following a hashtag, and free up space for new “active” tags, click on “Edit Tag” and set the hashtag’s switch to “inactive”. This turns the hashtag off, without deleting any of its data and frees up space for you to follow new hashtags.