Hashtag Finder Tools that Really ARE FREE for Public Use
If you’ve become frustrated trying to find a free web-based tool for finding hashtags to use in your social networking posts and tweets, you are in for a breath of fresh air.
This post will feature two free hashtag finders I use on a weekly basis.
Are Hashtags Worth it?
Twitter conducted its own research to find that tweets using hashtags double visibility. The study is from 2012, but I cited it because even back then the value of hashtags was known.
Yet, so many choose not to use hashtags. Or, if hashtags are used, most seem to be using them incorrectly in a way that will not generate much, if any, web traffic.
So, let’s take a closer look at what hashtags are before I demonstrate free hashtag finder tools for your public use.
What is a Hashtag?
I like to think of a hashtag like a sort of sticky note, but one that you give to someone else.
For example, say you’re in a grocery store and you see a sale on Oreo cookies in the cookie isle. You take a package for yourself and then decide to share your discovery with others.
Verbally, you would tell someone, “Go checkout the sale they’re having on Oreo cookies in Isle 9.”
Using a hashtag, you would write #OreoSale.
Because of the addition of the “#” mark, and the fact that I have no spaces between the words, the hashtag becomes a live link, if posted on a social network like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Readers click on the link to see a list of other posts related to Oreo Cooke Sales.
How Do Hasthtags Get You Traffic?
Getting more website traffic, tweets or posts on other social media where hashtags are used begins when people search for hashtags (or click on their live links) for specific topics of interest. Take Twitter, for example. You can use your search box to find tweets related to Oreo cookie sales by searching for the hash tag #OreoSale.
Obviously, by looking at the tweet dates, you can tell that #OreoSale is not exactly a highly searched hashtag. So, it probably wouldn’t generate tons of traffic your way.
If you want your tweets, posts, and links to your website pages to be seen by many, you have to use hashtags that are used more frequently.
Thus begins an entire business industry where developers have created web-based tools to help you find highly used hashtags and monitor their trends over time.
And, people are willing to pay for such web-based tools, by the month, and prepay by-the-year to get in-depth knowledge about hashtag usage.
Literally dozens of websites I recently read though showcase anywhere from five to 50 hashtag related products. All of the suggestions require payment for use. What’s annoying is that most of those posts target their keyword searches with “free hashtag finder” as their lure.
I have only found two hashtag finders that truly are free…never to EVER ask you for your email address or payment for full use. I’d like to feature them here.
The Only Truly FREE Hashtag Finders
I’m going to leave this section open for editing so that over time I can add or remove free hashtag finders as I come across them or hear about their removal (or changing to paid models). Let’s start with the hashtag finder tool I use the most and have used for several years now…totally free.
All Hashtag
The idea with All Hashtag is to provide you with the best, most commonly used, top 30 hashtags for any given word you’re wanting to feature.
Using something a bit more business like, and real-world, than Oreo cookies, I’m going to use the keyword “virtual” since virtual live events are so prominent in our lives these days.
After you enter your desired keyword to find related hashtags for, I suggest you click or tap the radio button that says “Top” as indicated on the image. This will give you the top 30 most frequently used hashtags…as shown below.
From there, you would copy and paste one or two hashtags per tweet (on Twitter), up to 9 (on an Instagram post), 2 or 3 (for a Facebook post) and we suggest just 1-4 for LinkedIn.
TagsFinder
The next free hashtag finder we’ve been using lately is called TagsFinder. What we really like about this free web-based tool is its functions for excluding results that are related to certain topics (porn) for example, and words (sucks) for example.
The results from your hashtag search will results in the top 30 best, and most used, hashtag results in a similar fashion to All Hashtag.
We particularly like the ability to click the “X” to eliminate hashtags we will not use, thereby reducing the amount of hashtags to copy to your clipboard.
What to Do Next with Your Hashtag List
Now that you have a list of 10 or more potential hashtags to work with, your next step is to create content around them.
Typically, you will want to make a short statement of content to inspire readers to click through a link to where you feature more extensive content about the topic.
The example I’ll use, for the sake of this post, will be for Twitter. I’ll use one hashtag found through the All Hashtag site (#virtual) and I already know #businessowners is another popular tag. And, I’m wanting to promote my new Virtual Live Events Promotion group on Facebook, so I’ll use the link to that.
Start Using Hashtags Now!
The best way to start using hashtags is to…just start using hashtags! Use them in every tweet on Twitter and every post on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Use free web-based hashtag finder tools to help you find the most commonly used hashtags for any topic and upgrade to fee-based hashtag finders if using hashtags becomes a focused marketing effort for your company.
For most of us, though, free hashtag finder tools will do everything we need for high quality content sharing and traffic building.
