On A Mission

Marketers frequently incorporate keywords used by their target audiences to increase their chances of prospects finding their brand or products in search engines.

Since Twitter renamed itself to X in 2023, the microblogging platform has changed the way users pull and track analytics on its platform. While Twitter previously allowed users to access analytics for free via the Creator Studio, it is now only available on the native site with a paid subscription. Formerly, the primary analytics were impressions (number times posts appeared), profile visits, mentions and follower growth.

Subscribers now get a percentage of the revenue X earns from a users’ most engaged followers. So, Twitter users not only need more followers to have content appear more frequently, they are financially incented to have an engaged audience.

What is available on the platform is searching by topic or keywords. It also constantly updates with the top trending # conversations with options to search within News, Sports or Entertainment categories.

Credit to Alison K Consulting who developed an infographic to define the distinctions between using keywords for search engine optimization versus incorporating hashtags in social media. Social media hashtags tend to be shorter and are discoverable through search on the platform where the post appears. However, if relevant key phrases are incorporated into social media posts, then embedded keywords may appear in broader search page results. She captures the most important point here that holds true regardless of the platform or algorithm:

“The best way is to deeply understand the needs of your clients, and confirm the language they use.”

So how should we go about finding the most relevant keywords for social media hashtags and key phrases for optimization in search engine result pages?

Evaluating Hashtags for Social Media

In the arena of higher education where there are thousands of degree-granting institutions, incorporating specific hashtags into social media conversations is one way to get the attention of students and other key audiences.

There are Social Media Text Analytic tools to help organizations examine the patterns of user- generated comments and conversations taking place online. Tools include IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding, Google Cloud Natural Language API, Lexalytics Semantria, MonkeyLearn and Sprout Social.

Once a shortlist of keywords is generated, hashtags can be woven into social media.

Attempting to Use Sprout Social to Monitor Hashtags

I opened a Sprout Social account for the 30-day free trial that gave me the option to create a few preliminary keywords for the above higher education example. #grit, #21centurycareers, #createthefuture.

The Sprout tool wasn’t returning any data for a number of hashtags I tried, even ones that were trending on X like #SaturdayMorning. There used to be a free tool called TweetDeck to monitor specific hashtags in real time and view all related tweets as they were posted. What a great way for Social Media Managers to jump into relevant conversations!

Again, there is a newer version of this now available with a paid subscription in X. I’m also reading something called Flight School that aims and claims to provide free X (formerly Twitter) training.

Hey, I’m all about free and freedom! To be continued …