You probably have a number of goals when it comes to managing your social media accounts for your business. These can include building brand awareness, facilitating conversations with clients and prospects, and generating leads. In order to be successful at achieving these goals, there are a few important components to consider when posting on social, including the copy, images, content and the hashtags you choose to share.

In this blog post, I will go into detail about how to choose the best hashtags for your social media accounts.

Topical

The first thing you’ll want to do is to narrow down your choice of hashtags according to the products or services you provide. Your selection of hashtags should work in combination with the keyword strategy you already have in place. Think about through how you want your prospects to find you. Your hashtags can also help elevate you as a leader or be a great resources for that topic.

Frequency

Social Media, specifically Twitter, is a fast paced communication tool. In order to ensure you get the most traction from your hashtags, you want do some research on how often your potential hashtag gets used. To understand how frequently hashtags are used start by searching on Twitter. For an in-depth analysis on hashtags, consider exploring third party website such as RiteTag and Hastracking. These websites will give you information such as how many tweets per hour use that particular hashtag and how much engagement those hashtags receive. Compare the frequency of hashtag use to how often you plan to use it to see if it is a viable option.

Relevance

Another reason you want to do some research before determining which hashtags are right for you and your brand is to see what’s currently being said in relation to your potential hashtags. This will help you figure out if the conversations surrounding those hashtags are relevant to your companies products or services. For example, a search on #sales results in many posts on sales jobs and event ticket retailers. So, for us it may be more relevant to use the more specific hashtag like #b2bsales.

Length

Although hashtags are used across a number of social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Google+, you still need to consider the length of the hashtags that you’ll use in your posts. This is especially true if you plan on using your hashtag on Twitter since it has a 140 character limit per post. Ensure that your hashtag either fits in with your copy naturally, or is short enough to add to the end of a tweet.

Uniqueness

If you are looking to start a new hashtag for your brand or your event, ensure it is unique. A quick search on Twitter will indicate whether or not the hashtag is being used for a different purpose. Make sure your unique hashtag is also easy to remember for your prospects, clients or event attendees to use in their own social posts.

How do you use hashtags and how much success had it yielded? Let us know in the comments below. If you’d like a more in-depth understanding on how to build a social media strategy, download our white paper, Twitter for Sales and Marketing.