Millions of people turn to Pinterest for inspiration, whether for home décor, recipes, fashion, or DIY projects, making it a prime space for content creators and businesses to connect with their target audience. However, with so much content being shared daily, standing out in a crowded field can be a challenge. Optimizing your visibility through hashtags is one way to help your Pins get discovered and seen by the right audience.

Hashtags on Pinterest play a functional role in categorizing content, allowing users to find posts that match their search interests. By using relevant hashtags, you can connect your content to trending topics, niche communities, and active searches, increasing the likelihood of being discovered by potential followers or customers. But simply adding random or overly popular hashtags to your Pins may not yield the results you hope for. The key lies in finding the best hashtags on Pinterest that are specific to your industry, content, and audience interests.

So, how do you determine the best hashtags to use on Pinterest? In this article, we will walk you through the process of researching and identifying the best Pinterest hashtags for your business or personal profile. Whether you’re a food blogger, small business owner, or DIY enthusiast, our step-by-step approach will help you leverage Pinterest hashtags strategically to enhance your presence and connect with the right audience.

Can you use Hashtags on Pinterest?

In short, yes! You can use hashtags on Pinterest. Hashtags are a great way to make your Pinterest content more discoverable. When you include relevant hashtags in your Pins, you can reach users searching for specific topics or trends. Hashtags also help you categorize your content, so it appears in relevant searches and potentially reaches a broader audience. While hashtags may not play such a pivotal role on Pinterest as other social media networks, they are important to keep an eye on and research in order to optimize your overall performance and reach.

The function of hashtags on Pinterest goes beyond visibility, since they can help connect your content with users who are interested in your niche. When someone clicks on or searches for a hashtag, they’re taken to a feed of all Pins using that hashtag. This makes it easier for users to explore content and for creators to attract new followers who are actively looking for inspiration, ideas, or solutions related to their Pins.

How to Use Hashtags on Pinterest

Hashtags on Pinterest are an effective way to organize and categorize your content, helping users to discover your Pins when searching for specific topics. Including hashtags in your Pin descriptions connects your content to active searches and communities, making it more likely to increase its visibility. For example, a Pin about a summer salad recipe could use a hashtag like #SummerRecipies to reach users looking for similar ideas, since this hashtag will act as a keyword for a user’s search.

Relevance and specificity also play an important role in the success of your hashtags. Broad hashtags such as #Recipes or #Fitness may attract a large audience, but they often face competition from countless other posts. Pairing them with niche hashtags like #QuickHealthyMeals or #YogaForBeginners can help ensure that your content is targeted to a more engaged and interested audience. This balanced approach helps your Pins stand out while connecting with users who are likely to interact with your content.

Finally, analyzing your hashtag performance on a regular basis is key to optimizing your strategy. Different seasons, trending topics, or shifts in user behavior can affect which hashtags work best. By tracking results, you can refine your approach to ensure your Pins stay relevant and continue to drive meaningful engagement. Additionally, seamlessly integrating hashtags into Pin descriptions helps maintain a natural, engaging presentation while maximizing their impact.

Researching Pinterest Trending Hashtags

While the process to find the best performing and most popular Pinterest hashtags may seem straightforward at first, it is, in fact, more of a challenge than you think. But don’t worry—we’re here to guide you through the process. Researching hashtags involves more than just picking a few popular or trending ones. Rather, it’s about understanding the trends within your niche and tailoring your choices to resonate with your audience.

Before diving into the specifics, it’s important to understand the context of this analysis. Identifying popular hashtags on Pinterest depends on the keywords you choose to explore, the country being analyzed, and the language of the content. These factors influence the accuracy and relevance of the results, and slight adjustments can significantly alter the insights you gather.

In this article, we will show you two ways you can research the best hashtags on Pinterest for a specific topic or industry. The first is what we will be showing you in this section, and involves exploring the top trending hashtags for a specific topic and location. In showing you this first approach, we will be using Fanpage Karma’s discovery tool that allows you to research various trends within a specific topic area and/or country. The advantage of this approach is that you are able to pull in data from a wide range of Pinterest profiles that are using hashtags related to a topic, so you can find the hashtags that are correlated with the highest post interaction rates.

Let’s go through a quick example where we research the best Pinterest hashtags in terms of post interaction rate. In this scenario, we will conducted an analysis of Pinterest hashtags using the keyword “food.” We then set up an analysis where we examined data from Australia and the United Kingdom to compare trends across regions, showing how location-specific insights can refine your strategy. Below, we’ll walk you through some examples of Pinterest popular hashtags for this specific case. As shown in the two graphs below, based on the results for Australia the best hashtags on Pinterest would be #sponsoredpost, #healthychristmas, #healthchristmascake, and #glutenfreefruitcake. 

(Australia – English)

However, let’s say that if we change the filter to the UK market in English. As we can see below, that the top hashtags appearing in the graphs change. According to the UK hashtag analysis, the best hashtags for Pinterest are #cinnamon, #pasta, #noodlepudding, and #lokshenkugel. This comparison shows how trending hashtags can vary depending on location, underscoring the importance of tailoring your strategy to your own profile and type of content. 

(UK- English)

While these results offer valuable insights, this approach should not be the only step you take when researching the best Pinterest hashtags for your content niche or industry. Keep in mind that with a discovery tool that detects trends, like the one we used from Fanpage Karma, brings in data from a broad base of profiles. This means that the hashtags shown in the charts above may not always be specific to your target audience, but rather are related to a broad theme or keywords that you want to search for. This can be helpful if you are interested in broad hashtag trends for a certain topic in a specific country. However, there is a second approach that you should also consider.  

For this reason, in the next section, we’ll explore a step-by-step method for conducting a more focused analysis, allowing you to select the profiles that align with your industry and goals. This approach analyses the hashtags from the competitors and/or similar profiles that you identify, which helps ensure that your data set is focused on the behavior and interests of your target audience. 

Finding the Best Hashtags for Pinterest

At the end of the day, you know your industry best and have a good idea of who your target audience is and other profiles that are focused on the same target audience. When using a data-based approach for Pinterest hashtag research, having an in-depth understanding of whom the main voices are is key. This is because, with the right social media tool, you can analyze the performance not only of your own profile, but also your competitors or other similar profiles. This allows you to analyze a large data set to find out what hashtags correspond to higher post interaction rates.

The first approach we discussed above is broader in scope and looks at specific topics and countries. However, this second approach we will now highlight relates to your industry specifically and the target audience that you and other similar profiles share. This can help you find the top-performing Pinterest hashtags that can improve your visibility. We have broken down the process into five simple steps to help you create a Pinterest hashtag strategy that’s right for you. In order to better illustrate this process, we will pretend that we are managing the Pinterest account for a healthy recipe blog and what to find relevant Pinterest hashtags for our Pins.

Step 1: Identify Key Profiles in your Industry

The first step in the process of finding the best hashtags to use on Pinterest is to identify relevant profiles in your industry that post similar content. Since our focus is on the food and recipes niche, it makes sense to analyze Pinterest accounts that consistently share high-performing food-related content. These profiles can include popular food bloggers, recipe developers, culinary brands, and food magazines that already have strong engagement and visibility on the platform.  

To get started, ask yourself: who are the key players in your industry or niche? In this case, accounts such as Skinnytaste Healthy Recipes, Half Baked Harvest, Pinch of Yum, Damn Delicious, Budget Bytes, Deliciously Ella, Fit Foodie Finds, Minimalist Baker, Well Plated, Love and Lemons are excellent profiles to include in our analysis. These accounts cater to a wide variety of food enthusiasts, sharing everything from quick meal ideas and step-by-step recipes to specific niches like healthy eating, baking, or seasonal dishes. Profiles that perform well in your space can provide valuable insight into the hashtags that drive interaction and visibility on Pinterest, and will serve as a major part of the data set that you are creating for analysis.

When selecting profiles, make sure they align with the type of content you plan to share. If your focus is on healthy recipes, choosing accounts with similar themes will provide hashtags that better resonate with your target audience. Moreover, if you want to find other similar profiles to create a larger data set, you can search for profiles in a specific niche by using the same discovery tool that we already discussed in the last section. In this case, you could use a keyword search such as “recipes.” You can then explore the results and see what profiles may be good fits to add to your analysis. One last point to make here is about the advantage of being able to analyze an unlimited number of profiles with your social media tool. This then allows you to create large data sets that can give you more confidence in your results. 

Step 2: Determine the Timeframe for your Analysis

When researching the best Pinterest hashtags, the timeframe you choose for your analysis can significantly impact your results. Hashtags often change with seasons, trends, and user interests, so understanding when to analyze your data depends on your specific goals. For instance, analyzing a particular month can reveal seasonally popular hashtags for Pinterest, while looking at a longer period, such as a year, offers a broader picture of consistent, high-performing hashtags.

Let’s take a closer look at how the timeframe affects the data output by comparing two examples: January and July. For this analysis, the results are presented in a word chart, where the size of each word indicates how frequently a hashtag is used. Green hashtags represent higher post interaction rates, while redder hashtags reflect lower interaction rates. To begin, let’s take a look at the analysis for January 2024: 

(January 2024)

We can see a variety of hashtags worth considering, with particular attention to those highlighted in green. In this case, the best hashtags for Pinterest would be #healthyrecipes, #wellplated, #slowcooker, and #dinner. Next, we’ll adjust the timeframe to focus on July 2024 for the same profiles mentioned earlier and explore where differences may be. 

(July 2024)

In the case of July, the best Pinterest hashtags would be #healthyrecipes, #healthyeating, #dinnerreceipes, and #dinner. We see some overlap between the two time periods but also see other possible hashtags that we can use in the summer, such as #summerrecipes or #vegetarian.

By selecting a specific timeframe, you can pinpoint hashtags that align with seasonal trends or time-sensitive topics. This approach is particularly valuable for businesses that create content around holidays, seasonal promotions, or industry-specific trends. Whether you opt for a short or extended timeframe, tailoring your hashtag strategy to these insights can help you maximize your Pinterest reach and relevance throughout the year.

Step 3: Analyze Your Data and Review the Results

When conducting hashtag research for Pinterest, there are different ways to analyze your data. As we discussed above, changing the timeframe or profiles in your analysis will change your data set and your results. You can conduct different analyses where you change your timeframe, as well as bringing in more profiles to see how your output changes. This can be beneficial since you are getting a chance to analyze different data sets.

Moreover, when using a Pinterest hashtag research tool, you can typically display your data in formats such as a word chart, metric table, or bar graph. Each format offers its own advantages, and selecting the right one can help you identify the most effective hashtags for your content. Below, we will show three formats that you can choose from when analyzing data for the profiles we mentioned above for November 2024. 

We will start by analyzing a metric table where each hashtag is presented alongside its average post interaction rate and engagement percentage. This detailed layout allows for a close examination of performance across multiple hashtags. While the table may include a large number of hashtags, it can be filtered and sorted to highlight those with the best results. This format is particularly valuable for in-depth analysis, enabling you to identify high-performing hashtags and make informed decisions for your Pinterest strategy.

Another option you have to analyze your hashtag data is by displaying it in a bar graph. This format visually compares hashtags by highlighting their post interaction rates. Bar graphs are particularly useful for quickly identifying top-performing hashtags on Pinterest in terms of post interaction rates. Remember, in this case we are not so concerned with the popular hashtags for Pinterest, but rather which ones have the highest post interaction rates. The bar chart below shows the top 10 hashtags across the profiles we mentioned earlier in November 2024. In this case, the top Pinterest hashtags would be #asparagus, #roastedasaparagus, and #food.

The advantage of using a bar chart is its ability to quickly highlight hashtags with the highest post interaction rates. However, if you’re looking to identify hashtags that not only perform well but are also used more or less frequently, a word chart might be the most effective option. As seen in the example below, the smaller the word, the less it is used and the greener the hashtag, the higher the interaction rate of the posts that used that hashtag.

From the timeframe of analysis, the profiles you include in your data set, as well as the different ways you can present your data, there are a lot of decisions to make when analyzing the best Pinterest hashtags. However, having these options allows you to look at your data in different ways. Finding a hashtag research tool that allows you this flexibility in analysis, as well as the ability to analyze dozens or hundred of profiles, is important so you can research what you need.

Step 4: Implement Your Findings and Monitor Hashtag Performance

Once your Pinterest hashtag research is complete, the next step is integrating your findings into your Pin strategy. After all, the effectiveness of your analysis relies on how well you implement the hashtags you identified. We have already specified how you can use hashtags on Pinterest by adding the most relevant hashtags to your Pin descriptions, titles, and board names. However, the way in which you ultimately implement your Pinterest hashtag strategy is up to you.

You may want to focus on balancing popular Pinterest hashtags, such as #healthyrecipes or #dinnerideas, with more targeted ones, such as #roastedasparagus or #fallrecipes. This mix can help ensure that your Pins reach a broader audience while also appealing to niche groups that are highly engaged. When it comes to planning your overall content strategy, it can help to plan your posts out in advance to see what topics you should be researching in terms of hashtags. A social media content planning tool can be helpful in this regard, especially when you have different team members working together.  

Step 5: Continually Analyze and Monitor Your Results

Finding the best Pinterest hashtags is not a one-time task. Trends, seasons, and user behaviors shift over time, which means the hashtags that perform well today might not be as effective in the coming months. For instance, hashtags such as #fallrecipes may trend during autumn, while #dinnerideas may remain relevant year-round.

It is best practice to continually undertake Pinterest hashtag research. This includes regularly updating your data set by adding or removing profiles that align with your evolving niche or audience focus. Additionally, running analyses for different timeframes throughout the year can help you identify new patterns or emerging trends that keep your strategy relevant.

It’s equally important to monitor and analyze your performance after implementing your hashtags. Pay close attention to metrics such as impressions, saves, and clicks to determine if your effects are helping drive reach and engagement. Recognizing what works (and what doesn’t) over time allows you to refine your approach, ensuring you adapt to changes and optimize your Pinterest strategy for consistent, long-term success.

Final Thoughts on Researching Pinterest Hashtags

As we have shown above, there are two primary approaches to research the best hashtags to use on Pinterest for your own Profile and Pins. Finding the top Pinterest hashtags for your industry or content niche is most effectively done using a data-based approach that is powered by a social media tool. 

If you are interested in researching hashtags on Pinterest using the processes we outlined in this article, you can try Fanpage Karma’s free 14-day trial today! In addition to offering advanced analytic and benchmarking capabilities that are powered by unlimited profile tracking, Fanpage Karma also includes research, monitoring, community management, and content planning features.

Moreover, Fanpage Karma offers a free weekly webinar that demonstrates how you can use the tool to improve your social media performance.