Selecting Keywords & Hashtags

Design the keywords and hashtags that power your project’s listening accuracy.

Your keywords and hashtags are the “ears” of your project. Good keywords mean better signal, less noise.

Think in layers:

• Core brand terms.
• Campaign or product terms.
• Competitor terms (if relevant).
• Context or topic terms (optional).
• Exclusions to reduce noise.

Step 1: List Core Brand & Product Terms

Include:

• Official brand names (e.g., Kommon Poll, KommonPoll).
• Product or sub-brand names.
• Company name (if different from brand name).
• Common misspellings or spacing variations.
• Local-language or transliterated versions, if your audience uses them.

Example:

• Kommon Poll, KommonPoll, kommonpoll.com.
• Local variants or scripts where applicable.

Step 2: Include Handles, Usernames & URLs

Where relevant, add:

• Social media handles (e.g., @kommonpoll).
• Branded URLs (e.g., kommonpoll.com).
• Short-links used in campaigns (if they’re consistently used).

This helps pick up mentions even when users don’t write the brand name in plain text.

Step 3: Add Campaign & Hashtag Terms

For campaign-focused projects, include:

• Campaign hashtags (e.g., #ListenAtScale, #KommonPollAI).
• Slogans, taglines, or recurring phrases.
• Influencer handles participating in the campaign.

Examples:

• #YourCampaignHashtag.
• “Listen at scale”, “AI-powered social intelligence”.

Step 4: Add Competitor & Category Terms (If Needed)

For competitor projects or category research, include:

• Competitor brand names and product names.
• Common abbreviations, nicknames, or local terms.
• Category terms (e.g., “EV charging”, “loan rates”, “insurance claims”).

You can track competitors in separate projects or as part of the same project with filters, depending on how you want to compare.

Step 5: Use Exclusions to Reduce Noise

Some words are very common or ambiguous (e.g., “Apple”, “Maybank”, “Signal”) and can bring in irrelevant mentions.

Whenever possible:

• Identify unrelated meanings of your keywords.
• Add exclusion terms (for example, exclude “apple pie” if you’re the tech company, not the fruit).
• Narrow by language, region, or source types if that helps.

Tip: Start with a focused set of keywords. Once you see real mentions coming in, you can iterate—adding terms that you see often and excluding ones that create noise.