TikTok Hashtags Guide: Tools, Best Practices, and Trending This Month
TikTok values hashtags for categorizing videos and determining search results. But, the question always is, how can you find the best hashtags for your TikTok audience?
Hashtags have been around since 2007, grouping topics and similar messages on social media platforms. Despite the “hashtags are dead” discourse, incorporating a hashtag strategy is ideal for increasing visibility and maintaining a consistent online brand image.
This article will explore TikTok hashtags, providing strategies and best practices, as well as tools to analyze and identify key hashtags for your brand. Stay until the end to view the top trending TikTok hashtags
Do Hashtags Work on TikTok?
The short answer is yes, hashtags are a powerful tool on TikTok.
The TikTok algorithm considers hashtags for video rankings and grouping, allowing users to find related videos to their search intents. Hashtags can be regarded as part of a TikTok SEO strategy, keywords that help organize content topics and order relevant videos.
Creators and brands can incorporate analogous hashtags based on their target audiences’ search intentions, placing content in front of the right audience. With nearly 2 billion monthly active users, aligning hashtags with your niche increases high-quality views, lead generation, and followers.
How many hashtags should you use on TikTok?
This is a commonly asked question among social media users. While there is no specific number, the sweet spot is between 3-5 hashtags. Rather than thinking of the quantity, consider the quality of your hashtags.
We recommend selecting at least one of each of these hashtag topics:
- Branded hashtags directly mention your brand name, campaign event, or product.
- Content-related hashtags that summarize the topic or theme of your content.
- Audience-related hashtags to target and attract high-quality users, likely to resonate with your content.
5 Best Practices for Using Hashtags on TikTok
Besides grouping content, how can hashtags benefit your TikTok marketing strategy?
Implement brand-related hashtags
TikTok has become a leading search engine, with nearly half of Gen Z preferring TikTok as a search engine over Google, and 40% of Millennial users searching the platform to discover new things.
By adding hashtags to your video caption that complement your video topics, your videos can reach users seeking similar content. Brand-related hashtags can increase awareness about your products or services. For example, #coffeeshop can help attract coffee drinkers, and boost a local coffee shop’s visibility.
Source: TikTok Creative Center
Add hashtags relevant to your target audience
TikTok is a space for discovery, inspiration, and connection. While brand-related hashtags can increase brand awareness, adding non-branded hashtags can help boost engagement and authentic connection. For example, #naturelovers can connect your brand with users who have the same adoration for nature and the outdoors.
Source: TikTok Creative Center
Identify industry competitors
Industry-specific hashtags can reveal top industry competitors and other businesses using the same hashtags. When gathering brand-related hashtags, search the platform for which content ranks among the first results. Then, conduct a competitor analysis to analyze the brand’s strategies, results, and content to benchmark your TikTok performance against competitors.
Not only does this reveal how your brand ranks among competitors, but, it uncovers content opportunities and ideas for your strategy.
Optimize hashtags for SEO
As mentioned above, TikTok is a leading search engine that relies on algorithms to rank relevant content. Hashtags can be compared to keywords, terms that order content based on search intents. Understanding what your audience is looking for is key to building your TikTok hashtag strategy.
Consider the main topics that describe your brands’ products and services. Then, conduct keyword research to analyze trending hashtags related to your niche. How can you conduct keyword research for TikTok?
- Search the platform by relevant topics to analyze which content ranks amongst the first positions, and which pain points, solutions, or resources these videos address.
- Analyze your TikTok video performance to understand which content has achieved the best results. This can help uncover relevant hashtags to add to future videos.
- Use a keyword tool, like Keyword Tool or Semrush to view hashtag search volumes, trends, CPC, and competition.
- Search TikTok’s Creative Center to find trending hashtags and content by industry.
Leverage trending moments
We know trends are a massive part of TikTok’s fast-paced environment. Jumping on these trending moments can leverage your video views, reach, and engagement. Discover trends through the app’s search feature or browsing the TikTok Creative Center. While the former provides trends based on your activity, the latter analyzes trends and patterns across the platform.
For example, the hashtags #dwts and #dancingwiththestars have taken off on the platform, after Danny Amendola and Witney Carson’s dance moves inspired users to try the jaw-dropping dance move themselves.
TikTok Hashtag Tools
Incorporating hashtags into your TikTok videos can grow organic video views and reach, using targeted hashtags for your audience will help reach ideal leads, followers, and potential customers.
Instead of simply adding “trending” hashtags to your captions or video descriptions, using keywords that match your target audience’s search intents can be more effective for your long-term strategy.
To help build your TikTok hashtag list, here are a few tools and tips to drive your marketing strategies and content planning:
TikTok Creative Center & Search Insights
The first way to gain inspiration is from TikTok’s free marketing and creator tool, TikTok’s Creative Center. This offers key data on trends, top ads, emerging creators, and top-performing videos on TikTok. In the trends section, analyze the top-performing trends by industry to discover trending topics, moments, and conversations to tap into.
Source: TikTok Creative Center
At the top, narrow searches by industry, region, period, and new hashtags. Click on See analytics to view the interest over time, related videos, audience insights, and regional popularity associated with this hashtag.
Source: TikTok Creative Center
TikTok’s Creator Insights also provides keyword and topic analytics to find content opportunities for your audience. This tool provides keyword analytics, such as search volume and trend changes to understand the popularity and competition of specific search intents. Not only can you analyze suggested and trending keywords, but you can analyze search views and rankings based on your content.
Metricool’s TikTok Hashtag Generator
Metricool is a comprehensive social media management, analytics, and advertising platform providing social media managers, marketers, and creators tools to scale their online presence across multiple channels.
Planning and scheduling are an essential part of social media management, ensuring your content calendar is organized with your strategic content mix and content pillars. Metricool allows you to schedule and auto-publish to multiple networks simultaneously, maximizing your content exposure.
For Instagram and TikTok, Metricool’s Hashtag Generator allows you to search for popular hashtags by keyword. Next to the generated hashtags, view the total usage and directly add to your content’s caption.
TikTok Analytics
Analyzing your TikTok performance is vital to improving your content strategies. TikTok’s native analytics provide video, audience, and LIVE analytics to understand which content has resonated best with your audience, and what behaviors and interests you can capitalize on for future content.
Metricool’s TikTok Analytics allows you to analyze your entire marketing efforts in one dashboard. While understanding what has worked on TikTok, you can also measure the impact of your other channels – Instagram, X, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Threads, Twitch, and Google Business Profile – in one place.
When analyzing your TikTok profile, dive into your:
- Community growth, follower balance, number of published videos
- Audience demographics
- Content engagement, interactions, impressions, reach, and views
- Impression sources, average time watched, and average video duration
- List of top-performing videos in the period
When viewing the top-performing posts list, click View to navigate directly to the post for reference. These combined analytics let you measure what content and strategies have worked well, including posts with hashtags, to gather your ideal hashtag list.
Trending TikTok Hashtags this Month
Leveraging trending hashtags in content can improve reach and visibility on the platform. Each week, we monitor the top trending hashtags by industry, to provide you with trending hashtags in detail.
Incorporating hashtags relevant to your industry can increase brand authority and awareness, attracting high-quality leads for your brand or business.
Find the top trending hashtags by month here:
