How do I stop repeating hashtags and headline figures across a campaign?

Treat every hashtag and every headline figure as used once a post has it — if a later post uses it again, that is a reused hashtag or a reused figure. Keep one list per campaign of what has already been used and which post used it first, and check each new draft against that list before anyone signs it off.

Match loosely: #GrowthTips and #growthtips are the same tag, and 46,200 and 46200 are the same figure.

A campaign is read as a sequence, not as separate posts. When the same statistic leads posts three and nine, the follower who saw both reads the second as padding, and the one who only saw the second never learns anything new. A headline figure works best once, in the post built around it.

Hashtags repeat for a duller reason: they are the last thing added to a caption, usually by copying the previous post. After a few weeks the same block of tags sits under every post, whatever the post is about. Some repetition is deliberate, such as a campaign tag, and that is fine as long as it is a decision rather than a habit.

• Every hashtag in a published or approved post, normalised: lower case, no # sign.
• Every figure that carries the post: a percentage, a price, a count, a multiple such as 4.6x. Strip commas and spaces before comparing.
• Figures in the artwork as well as the caption. A carousel slide that says 41% has used 41% even if the caption does not.
• Not every number. A date, a step number or a phone number is not a headline figure. The test is whether the post would be weaker without it.

Add two tabs to the campaign spreadsheet. The first, Hashtags, has columns for the tag as written, the normalised tag, the post that first used it, and whether it is an intentional repeat such as the campaign tag. The second, Figures, has the figure as written, the normalised figure, what it measures, and the post that first used it.

Use a formula for the normalised column so nobody types it: LOWER and SUBSTITUTE for hashtags, SUBSTITUTE to remove commas and spaces for figures. Then a COUNTIF on the normalised column shows any value that appears more than once.

1. 1Seed the ledger. Before the first post, enter the campaign tag and any tags you have decided to reuse on purpose, and mark them intentional.
2. 2Log at approval, not at publishing. Add a post's tags and figures when it is approved. Waiting until it goes live leaves a gap in which two drafts can end up using the same thing.
3. 3Check each new draft. Paste its tags and figures into a scratch column and look them up against the normalised lists. Anything that matches needs a reason or a replacement.
4. 4Record what replaced it. When you swap a repeated figure for a different one, log the new one straight away. The replacement counts as used too.
5. 5Re-check after edits. A revision that changes the lead figure changes the ledger. Re-run the lookup after every substantive edit, not only the first draft.

• Checking only against the last post. The repeat that hurts is usually five or six posts back.
• Counting a post's own tags as repeats when it is re-checked after an edit. Exclude the post being checked from the ledger while you check it.
• Treating the ledger as a banned list forever. It belongs to one campaign; the next campaign starts with a fresh one.
• Forgetting that figures are also claims. A figure used once still has to be true; see how to build a blocked-phrases list.

A match is a question, not an error. Sometimes the repeat is right: a closing post that sums up the campaign may reasonably bring back its best figure, and a campaign tag is meant to appear everywhere. Mark those as intentional and move on.

More often the repeat is a sign the post has not found its own point. If post eight leads with the same 41% as post three, ask what post eight knows that post three did not. A different figure from the same source, a customer's own words, or a concrete example usually does the job better than the recycled number.

For hashtags, replace a reused tag with one that describes this post rather than the campaign in general. Tags about the specific subject, place or format of the post tend to be less crowded than the broad ones everybody copies, which is a reason to choose them in its own right.

In CampaignFlow, Campaign Guard keeps the ledger for you and checks each draft against it as you write. A reused hashtag or a reused figure is flagged naming the post that used it first, while the post is still a draft. Figures here are the headline figures recorded on a post.

The ledger counts every earlier post in the campaign, drafts included, which is stricter than logging at approval and closes the same gap. Campaign Guard also flags platform limits and claims to check.

One-off posts that sit outside a campaign get their caption checked, but not the reuse or rotation checks. Campaign Guard's rule checks have no limit on any plan; Fix with AI, which rewrites the flagged part, and the spelling, grammar and claims check carry a plan allowance. See the features page for the rest of the checks, and how to plan posts so nothing repeats for the planning half.