3 Ways to Find Trending Hashtags on Facebook

7 min readJul 5, 2023

Truth being said, hashtags never made it on Facebook, like on Instagram and Twitter. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t leverage them to optimize your social content.

There’s a huge load of contradictory opinions out there arguing about the real effectiveness of hashtags on Facebook. We believe that since hashtags make your content searchable, they also give it a higher chance of being reached by more users.

That’s why it’s worth exploring popular Facebook hashtags.

Here we’re going to introduce you to 3 ways to find trending hashtags on Facebook for your niche and share some tips to use them to revamp your Facebook content plan.

Let’s get started!

Do Hashtags Work on Facebook?

It’s true that hashtags can make your posts searchable on Facebook since they work on this social network the same way as on TikTok and Instagram.

Basically, Facebook hashtags categorize content on the same topic and present it all together to you in a single “place”, when you click on a specific hashtag or type it in the search bar.

However, the results you can get from searching content via hashtags — from posts to reels — are generated by:

Public accounts, like celebrities or brands
Public pages
Private users who have chosen to publish their content in public mode

So, does hashtagging work on Facebook? Absolutely, especially if we’re talking about brand accounts. We suggest you do your own experiments. And come to your own conclusion based on facts and figures, not just random opinions on the web.

The best way to start your experimentation is by using top Facebook hashtags for your niche. Read along as we explain 3 different ways to do so below.

How to Find Trending Hashtags on Facebook

There are various ways to find top hashtags on Facebook, but here we picked and analyzed the most effective ones. Read carefully.

Use a Facebook Hashtag Tracker

This is the easiest way to find trending hashtags, not only on Facebook but on any social media! All you have to do is find a reliable hashtag tracker.

For example, with Mentionlytics you can explore Facebook hashtags in your niche without much effort. Let’s see how.

Step #1: Add your keywords

First of all, you can create an account for free and enter your brand name as a keyword to monitor, along with your direct competitors, or even a Facebook hashtag that you’re really interested in. Immediately, the platform will start monitoring the mentions of the given keywords across all social media.

Bonus: Learn how to monitor Facebook groups

Step #2: Go to “Keyword Cloud”

Next, Mentionlytics will analyze these mentions to extract relevant hashtags and present them to you via the Keyword Cloud in your Overview Dashboard.

At this point, you have to choose the Facebook logo in the filters to view only Facebook results.

Back to the Keyword Cloud, you can click on each hashtag to see its performance metrics and evaluate whether it’s worth including it in your next Facebook posts!

Check the total mentions to find out how many times this hashtag has been used on Facebook posts. That’s how you can understand if a hashtag is trending. Social engagement and reach are also essential KPIs to take a look at, as they can give you an idea of the effectiveness of this hashtag.

Additionally, the sentiment analysis will give you a clear understanding of whether Facebook users are including this hashtag in positive, negative, or neutral posts so that you can plan yours accordingly.

Step #3: Check “Top Keywords”

The Keyword Cloud offers you quick info on the trending Facebook hashtags in your niche. However, if you want to get a bit deeper into these hashtags, you can do so via the Top Keywords.

You can click on the Top Keywords feature at the left menubar and check Hashtags Only at the right corner of the list, that it’ll be generated automatically.

That’s how you’ll see all your relevant hashtags on Facebook in a collective and comprehensive view. It’s a better choice if you want to examine and compare them based on their performance metrics.

Furthermore, in Top Keywords you can sort the list of trending hashtags based on the number of their mentions, reach, or engagement, to see which of the hashtags score better in which metrics.

From there you can also download the results as an Excel or Text file to incorporate this list into your presentations, share it with your team, or work on it offline.

Bonus! In Mentionlytics you’ll find SIA, the AI-powered Social Intelligence Advisor that can give you actionable tips on which hashtags are performing better for you and your competitors, so you know to use them more.

Use Facebook’s search

If you don’t feel like using hashtag trackers yet, you can do some hashtag tracking manually by using Facebook’s native search. Just type any popular keywords in your industry with the symbol “#” at the beginning and Facebook will bring you back all public content including these hashtags as a stream.

You can scroll through this content to get ideas for your posts and see how many likes, comments, and shares it generates using these hashtags.

Two criteria to keep in mind when assessing different hashtags through Facebook search to include them in your hashtags strategy:

Pay attention to the dates of the most popular posts, because that will show you if a hashtag is currently trending or was in the past.
Focus on the engagement metrics of the posts to identify if the hashtag is worth using in your own posts.
Analyze your competitors’ posts

Another resourceful way to find trending hashtags on Facebook is by analyzing your competitors’ posts. You can use a social listening tool to do it automatically, but you can also get it done by yourself.

You can visit your competitors’ Facebook pages and scan their activity. Then, you can see which hashtags they use in their posts with the highest engagement metrics and note them down to use them in your own social content.

That’s it! Now, you know some ways to guide your hashtag work. But don’t go since we still have some tips to share with you on Facebook hashtags. Scroll down!

How to Use Hashtags on Facebook

As with all social media platforms, you have to use hashtags on Facebook with caution. Hashtags can help you maintain a consistent brand image and optimize your business page. Also, a post with hashtags can make your content reachable to your target audience, even outside your following.

Nonetheless, using too many or too generic hashtags will surely ruin your metrics and displease your audience.

So, here is how to hashtag on Facebook like a pro:

Create a hashtag with #yourbrandname — through a hashtag generator or by simply typing it in your captions — and start leveraging it in your posts, to make it easier for users that don’t follow your account to reach your content.

Source: Facebook
Use trending hashtags to create buzz, but make sure the content you post is truly relevant to these trends.
Include one niche-related hashtag in every post you publish, but not the same one every time, because that will harm your performance.
Feel free to use hashtags throughout the text, but make sure you #don’t #do #this. Or just drop 1–2 hashtags at the bottom of the text.

Source: Facebook
Experiment with alternative hashtags and see which of them bring better results. There’s no cure-all when talking about hashtags.

Pro Tip: Do you hate trial and error? Skip it, then, with SIA. SIA will analyze your social media performance and propose which popular hashtags you should use more based on your data — not some generic info! Try SIA now.

To see how many of them you should use in each post, take a look at the next section.

How Many Hashtags Should I Use on Facebook?

Well, this is a question that most social media managers, like you, ask themselves from time to time.

As a general notion, we can safely say that 1–2 hashtags that are highly relevant to your content are sufficient. You must avoid exaggerating and packing your posts with them. Too many hashtags or too generic ones will make your posts look spammy — to the users as well as to the algorithm.

Source: Facebook

Find Facebook Trending Hashtags in Your Niche

To wrap up, hashtags are still relevant on Facebook, like in any other social network. But you have to know which of them you should use and how. After all, with 1.98 billion people using Facebook every single day, you should optimize your Facebook marketing strategy as much as you can to achieve your full potential.

Skip the manual work and find the best hashtags for Facebook in your industry through your Mentionlytics’ free trial account. Get started now.

Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/facebook-hashtags