We are all aware of hashtags and often use them in our Instagram captions or while tweeting. Regardless of the social media platforms you will use for your marketing, hashtags will help enhance your brand’s awareness reach and engagement, giving you more exposure and audience engagement.

You may know how to use hashtags, but do you know how not to use them? There are certain dos and don’ts for using hashtags for your branding strategies.

Don’t: Join a lot of words

The best hashtags are those that are simple, short and easy to recall. Joining too many words into a single hashtag will not really serve its purpose. For instance, an #allnewmarketingstrategy won’t do the same effect as #marketing will.

Do: Use Relevant and Specific Hashtags

Relevant hashtags will make your content more noticeable as compared to the relevant ones. If your brand is about skincare and you use hashtags like #foody, your brand will be hard to discover and lose engagement.

Don’t: Spam with Hashtags

If you thought the more hashtags you use, the better it would be, it’s not the case. Spamming your posts or blogs with hashtags is not right and can overwhelm your audience and make it look messy. Up to 30 hashtags are acceptable, but that does not mean you use all 30 of them. The optimal number is around three to four in captions and five to six in blog posts.

Do: Avoid Popularity

The most popular hashtags are usually not necessarily the most effective ones. Using a popular, but unrelated hashtag for your content will not give it the appropriate reach and might even result in negative outcomes. Because the popular hashtags are already being used by many people, your content can lose its visibility among them.

Hashtags are very important these days and shouldn’t be ignored. They can grab attention, increase visibility, give insights on your audience and competitors, boost engagement and the list goes on.