It’s hard to deny the power of social media and how integral it is in an inbound marketing strategy. When it comes to creating a social media strategy there are a number of components to consider. These include the copy and the content you choose to share.

Another crucial, but often overlooked, component to consider is the hashtag. Hashtags are used to categorized social media posts so they can be easily searched. However, hashtags can go far beyond this function.

Here are 6 creative way to use hashtags in your social media strategy:

1. Host a Twitter Chats

Twitter chats are live interactions that focus on a specific topic. They occur on a predetermined date and time and can be monitored with the specific hashtag. If you want to host your own Twitter chat, creating a unique hashtag to correspond to your Twitter chat is essential. If you don’t want to host, following a Twitter chat with its corresponding hashtag is a great way to participate in the conversation. A Twitter chat can help you gain a lot of traction and engagement in a relatively small amount of time.

2. Participate in Events

Hashtags at events are essential both for promoting the event before as well as during the event. An easy to follow hashtag can help attendees connect with each other to at the event. A quick search on the event hashtag can also help those who weren’t at the event catch up with what they may have missed. After the event, a search for the unique hashtag is a great place to locate prospects to follow-up with.

3. Monitor Prospects and Competition

If you are using a social media management tool, such as Hootsuite, to
monitor your social accounts you may have the ability to save your hashtag searches. With the capability, you can create streams with hashtags pertaining to either prospects you are trying to connect with or competition you’d like to monitor. For prospects, search pain point or inquiries that your company can address. For competitors search branded hashtags or hashtags they are using to run social media campaigns.

4. Use Hashtags Across Platforms

Although hashtags are used primarily used on Twitter and Instagram, we now see them being incorporated across a number of other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Google+. Use this to your advantage to create a marketing campaign across various platforms to encourage greater engagement and farther reach.

5. Take them Offline

Hashtags are so universally recognized that you can also use them offline. For example, in your print marketing or promotional material consider including a branded hashtag as part of your copy. This may encourage your prospects and clients to continue your conversation online. This is beneficial to you because it can help you monitor your brand’s conversations easier online.

As you research, and focus your social media hashtag strategy, remember to conduct regular audits and check out Twitter Analytics to measure success.

For updates on the latest news and trends on marketing and social media follow us on Twitter. If you’re ready to create an in-depth strategy, check out our white paper, Twitter for Sales and Marketing.