How to Find TikTok Hashtags and Go Viral

TikTok is today’s hottest social media platform, with over 1 billion monthly active users. With its availability in more than 200 countries, brands utilize the platform’s power to target a wider audience. But, while creating value-delivering TikTok content is one piece of the puzzle, getting it in front of your audience is another challenge. That’s where TikTok hashtags come into play.

Organic growth on TikTok is entirely possible. TikTok hashtags are your ticket to going viral on the platform. Moreover, they play a pivotal role in the success of your TikTok marketing strategy. This article helps you to leverage TikTok hashtags to get the eyeballs on your content.

What are viral TikTok hashtags? 

TikTok hashtags are similar to content categories that help in content discovery. 

TikTok’s algorithm uses hashtags to understand what the content is all about. Then, it lets other users find your content based on your hashtags. Hashtags on TikTok work the same way as on other social media platforms.

A hashtag is any letter, emoji, or digit preceded by the symbol ‘#’. For example, #DIY is a top TikTok hashtag. You can use this hashtag to find content labeled as DIY. Using it as your search query would populate your screen with the viral and trendy ‘Do it Yourself’ TikTok videos. 

TikTok users can add hashtags to their video captions while posting their content. The hashtags you use should be directly related to your video content.

For example, if you use #comedy, your video content should make people laugh. Using the wrong hashtags would result in improper content labeling, impacting your content reach.

TikTok hashtags are clickable. You can tap on these mini buttons to go to a search page with content from other TikTok users labeled with that particular hashtag. 

Why are TikTok hashtags important? 

You need TikTok hashtags to make your content go viral on TikTok. TikTok hashtags are essential because of the following reasons.

• Expand reach – Hashtags extend your content reach. The TikTok algorithm uses hashtags to show your content to other TikTok users who might be interested in your content. In other words, hashtags bring relevancy to your content and increase your TikTok views. They act as a bridge between your content and relevant audience.
• Influence the ‘For You Page’ – Using hashtags with your content can help you land in your target audience’s ‘For You Page’.
• Content discovery – Hashtags are the phrases people use to search for content they are interested in. People looking for a specific topic can discover your content using hashtags. For instance, a person interested in watching makeup videos can search for such videos using #makeup. 
• Increase followership – Users can also follow hashtags. There are two ways to end up in other users’ feeds. One is if they are your followers, and the second is if they follow the specific hashtags you target. You can allure these people to follow your profile with the correct content positioning.
• Build community – Hashtags are a great way to build online communities. Branded hashtags can connect people with similar interests and lead to more engagement & collaboration.

Read-Up: How to Use Hashtags for Your Social Media Posts in 2022

Branded Hashtag Challenges

In addition to using already trending and popular hashtags, TikTok users can create their hashtags, known as branded hashtags. 

What are branded hashtags?

Branded hashtags are the common hashtags you create for your brand with a promotion purpose. These hashtags could be for a product, brand, event, or campaign promotion. The following are some popular branded hashtags.

• Peloton #TogetherWeGoFar

• Disney+ #DisneyPlusVoices

• MAC: #YouOwnIt

• Fortnite: #EmoteRoyaleContest

• Coca-Cola: #ShareACokeChallenge

Why use branded TikTok hashtags?

TikTok branded hashtags have a 17.5% engagement rate compared to other platforms, with less than 1.0%. In addition, branded hashtags offer the following benefits.

• Branded hashtags don’t have competition because they are unique to your brand. They increase your brand awareness, builds brand voice and bring more views from your follower’s network.
• You can track user engagement with branded hashtags. Since competitors won’t use your branded hashtag, the engagement will be relevant to your brand. 
• Branded hashtags help organize social content related to a particular campaign in one place.
• You can create your own TikTok trends with branded hashtags instead of following others. 

On top of the benefits mentioned above, you can run contests and challenges using branded hashtags on TikTok. Branded hashtag challenges transform your audience from passive content consumers to active participants. 

Branded hashtags challenges are sponsored by brands and revolutionize the advertisement space. The objective of these hashtags is to encourage your followers and audience to use your branded hashtag in their content. This process results in tons of user-generated content that you can market.  Learn more about TikTok advertising.

Branded hashtags take some time to fire up. However, you can try using different branded hashtags to see which ones work.

Also Explore: TikTok SEO: How to Rank High on TikTok

Which hashtags get the most likes on TikTok?

As absurd as it may sound, the popular hashtags get the most likes on TikTok. Popular hashtags are subject to change over time, but some hashtags are all-time famous. Some of them are listed below: 

• #funny

• #meme

• #tiktok

• #love

• #follow

• #trending

• #fashion

• #art

• #music

Usually, generic hashtags, as can be seen in the list mentioned above, get the most likes because many people are using them. And the engagement they drive isn’t beneficial for the brands to gain insights into their audience.

Moreover, it is challenging to attract users’ attention by searching for popular hashtags with a wider-audience appeal because of their competition.

A general rule for brands to get the most likes is to use hashtags relevant to their niche. Because the generic hashtags may not guarantee the most likes for your brand. Brands are more likely to be noticed by an appropriate target audience interested in specific hashtag-related content.  

How to find the right hashtags for your content?

You must find the best TikTok hashtags for your brand or business to get the most out of using them. It calls for more research than guesswork. Following practices can be helpful in your hashtag research. 

Look at what your competition is up to

It’s better to learn from others’ experiences and save time & resources by avoiding their mistakes. 

Knowing your competition can help you find out what’s trending in your niche. By researching the hashtags and content they are producing, you can; 

• Get inspiration from the hashtags performing well for their brand.
• Get insights about the practices and hashtags you need to avoid that aren’t working for your competitors.
• It can also help you decide on trying a new concept not used by your competitors. 

With knowledge of your competitors’ practices, you can avoid being perceived as a copycat in your niche. Overall, competitor analysis helps you build a roadmap for your hashtag strategy and craft a unique approach specific to your brand.  

Get insights related to your audience

Whats better way to find the right TikTok hashtags than looking at your audience? First, see what they are using in their content. Then, find the kind of communities they follow.

Also, dive deeper into the followers of your audience to get hashtag inspiration and learn more about their interests.

Look into the TikTok business account analytics to see which hashtags on your profile get the most attention from your followers. Then, do more of what’s working out for you.

Another Way to find the best TikTok Hashtags is to use TikTok hashtag tools. These tools let you find popular hashtags with stats about the number of posts, views, post views, etc.

How to use hashtags in your niche?

Where and how many?

There isn’t any specific number of hashtags best for use. You can use as many TikTok hashtags in a single post as possible within the 100 characters caption limit. Also, there isn’t any disadvantage to using the maximum possible number of hashtags in a post. Therefore, the more, the merrier. You can keep your captions short and squeeze as many hashtags as possible.

You can add more hashtags in the comments if you run out of your caption characters. Of course, these hashtags won’t be treated the same by the TikTok algorithm as the ones in the captions, yet they are an excellent way to boost your discoverability.

Other places to use trending TikTok hashtags are your bio and in-video text. 

How to come up with the best hashtags?

It’s best to keep your hashtags simple, short, and straightforward. Remember you want to use hashtags that are memorable and easy to spell.

It’s best not to use any special characters, complicated spellings, longer words, or punctuation marks in your hashtags – making them hard to grab. Because it’s not often that people make an effort to copy-paste the hashtag they can’t remember. 

A mix of trending and niche-specific hashtags

Although popular hashtags get the most attention, they also come with competition because everybody uses them. A good approach to using hashtags is having a mix of top and niche-specific hashtags to target a broad and specific audience. You can start broad and get specific as you build some momentum.

Look at the TikTok from Blueland; they have used niche-specific hashtags #ecohack & #foodwastetip with trending TikTok hashtag #tiktokholidays. Also, they use a branded hashtag, #blueland, in their post. 

Another reason for combining the two types of hashtags is to get visibility for your brand-specific hashtags via trending and established hashtags. A trial-and-error approach can ultimately lead you to invent your secret sauce for success.

Best practices for TikTok hashtags

Below are some of the best practices on how to go viral on TikTok using hashtags. 

Develop a TikTok hashtag strategy

Learning the importance of and the use of TikTok hashtags can help you devise a TikTok hashtag strategy. You need to consider various TikTok SEO factors to develop the best approach. 

• Define the goals you want to achieve by using hashtags.
• Ask questions about your audience; what are they looking for? How can you reach them? What action do you want them to take after interacting with your content? Do you want them to follow you, share, visit your website or make a purchase?
• Research your competition and audience, and make a list of hashtags to use.
• Experiment with your chosen hashtags and measure how they perform.
• Use the results to strengthen your TikTok hashtag strategy.

Onboard the influencer marketers

Hashtags help you discover TikTok influencers relevant to your audience. Use hashtags to find TikTok celebrities to partner with.

Hashtags can also help you strategize your influencer marketing campaigns. For example, you can ask your partner influencer what hashtags you want to target and need content. Or it can work the other way; your partner influencer can also help you find and target hashtags most relevant to your particular audience.

In 2019, Chipotle partnered with David Dobrik to promote their #ChipotleLidFlip challenge. It was about users filming videos flipping their Chipotle lids onto their bowls. This influencer marketing resulted in more than 100k videos and 230 million views.

Create branded hashtags & hashtag challenges

To engage your audience with your brand, develop your branded hashtags and promote them via branded hashtag challenges. Branded hashtag challenges matter because of the following reasons. They can:

• Spark massive user engagement.
• Positively impact every stage of your marketing funnel.
• Allow you to communicate brand values using brand slogans.
• Connect users with your brand by showing brand-specific content like behind-the-scenes.

An example of branded TikTok hashtags challenge was #eyeslipsface. E.l.f cosmetics launched it in 2019. It’s named after the brand “eyes lips face” (e.l.f cosmetics). It went viral & led to 3 million user-generated videos with over 5 billion views. It’s fantastic, isn’t it? 

Create content that fits the hashtags

Be conscious and pragmatic about the content you produce. It should be coherent with your hashtags or vice versa. It’s not enough to only use hashtags and neglect the content quality. Be intuitive in your approach to making content because quality content can stand your competition.

Read-Up: Top 20 TikTok Video Ideas to Boost Your Engagement

Here is an example from Jiayang, using hashtag #workfromhome. He is successfully delivering content related to the hashtag.

This is precisely what users interested in work-from-home content are searching for. Thus, users coming across his video won’t get disappointed after engaging with his content.

Keep up with the trends

Social media is all about trends. TikTok makes it easier to discover & jump into new trends and even create your own trends. You must get in at the right time to capitalize on the trends. This can boost your visibility and engagement.

Creating trending content cues your audience that you are a relevant and active brand. 

Read-Up: A Complete Guide to Schedule TikTok Posts in 2022

It’s time to go viral!

The marketing landscape is forever changing. So, you need to evolve as well. TikTok keeps introducing exciting tools for users and businesses to engage their audiences. But you can also make the TikTok algorithm work and devour significant growth. 

Implement the tips and tricks this article shares about TikTok hashtags to go viral because TikTok hashtags do work! 

ContentStudio helps you streamline TikTok management while you develop a killer TikTok hashtag strategy. Use it to publish your content at the best time, analyze the KPIs, engage with your audience, and discover curated content. Try ContentStudio for free to automate your social media management and make your life painless.

Trying to find the trending sounds on TikTok? Check out this video: