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Lesson 2: The Difference Between Trending Hashtags and Branded Hashtags

In the world of social media marketing, hashtags are often treated like lottery tickets. Pick the hottest one of the day, toss it into a post, and hope for a spike in views. Sometimes that works. Most times, it doesn’t. The real issue is not whether hashtags work, but which hashtags work—and for what purpose. Trending hashtags and branded hashtags serve very different roles, and confusing the two is one of the most common mistakes businesses make online.

This lesson breaks down the difference between chasing attention and building equity, and why a branded hashtag is one of the most underused long-term assets in your digital toolbox.

What Trending Hashtags Actually Do

Trending hashtags are driven by volume and velocity. They are popular because lots of people are using them at the same time. Think of them as busy highways during rush hour. There is plenty of traffic, but everyone is trying to get somewhere else, and no one is slowing down to notice you.

When you use a trending hashtag, your content briefly enters a massive public feed. That can lead to a short burst of impressions, especially if the topic is loosely relevant to your post. However, those impressions are fleeting. Your content is quickly buried under thousands of newer posts, memes, opinions, and unrelated material.

Trending hashtags are attention chasers. They are not designed to build relationships, reinforce your brand, or guide users deeper into your content ecosystem. They are useful for awareness campaigns, real-time events, or commentary, but they rarely convert viewers into followers, customers, or advocates.

Most importantly, trending hashtags are not yours. You do not control the conversation, the tone, or the context. Your post competes with everyone from global brands to bored teenagers, all fighting for the same slice of attention.

The Hidden Cost of Chasing Trends

The biggest cost of relying on trending hashtags is not inefficiency—it is dilution.

When you repeatedly attach your business to unrelated or loosely related trending tags, you scatter your content across the internet without a clear anchor. Engagement may increase, but it is unfocused. People might like a post, but they do not remember who you are or why they saw you in the first place.

This creates a false sense of success. Metrics go up, but meaning does not. You gain views without building memory, and attention without loyalty. Over time, this makes it harder for your audience to understand what you actually stand for.

Trending hashtags reward speed. Businesses need consistency.

What Branded Hashtags Do Differently

A branded hashtag is a digital anchor. It is a tag you create, own, and use consistently to organize your content and your community. Unlike trending hashtags, branded hashtags are not about volume; they are about focus.

When someone clicks a branded hashtag, they do not enter chaos. They enter your story.

A strong branded hashtag collects every relevant post, campaign, story, and piece of user-generated content into one searchable place. It becomes a living archive of your brand in action. Over time, it builds recognition, trust, and familiarity.

Branded hashtags protect your message because they frame the conversation. They ensure that when people engage with your content, they stay connected to you, not siphoned off into unrelated feeds.

This is how hashtags build equity. They accumulate value instead of borrowing it.

Long-Term Value Beats Short-Term Reach

Trending hashtags are rented attention. Branded hashtags are owned real estate.

Every time you use your branded hashtag, you reinforce brand recall. You teach your audience what to search for, what to follow, and how to engage with you beyond a single post. Over months and years, this compounds.

Branded hashtags also support storytelling. They allow you to connect past content with present campaigns and future initiatives. Someone discovering your brand today can instantly explore your history, your community, and your values through one simple click.

This is especially powerful for tourism businesses, creators, and destination brands, where experience, narrative, and trust matter more than impulse clicks.

Using Both Without Confusing the Goal

This is not an argument against trending hashtags. It is an argument for using them intentionally.

The most effective strategy is layered. A post may include one or two relevant trending hashtags to increase discoverability, but it should always include your branded hashtag as the foundation. That way, any attention you earn has somewhere to land.

Think of trending hashtags as billboards on a highway, and branded hashtags as the front door to your business. One attracts a glance. The other invites people inside.

If you skip the front door, you are paying for traffic that never arrives.

Why Businesses That Win Online Build Their Own Signals

Algorithms change. Platforms rise and fall. Trends expire daily. What remains consistent is the need for clear signals that tell both people and platforms who you are and why you matter.

Branded hashtags are one of those signals. They improve content organization, strengthen brand authority, and support long-term discoverability across platforms. They also encourage community participation, giving your audience a way to contribute to your story rather than just consume it.

The difference between trending hashtags and branded hashtags is the difference between being seen and being remembered.

Smart businesses do both. Successful businesses know which one they are building for the future.

Lesson 3: How a Branded Hashtag Builds Brand Recognition

In the fast-moving world of social media, standing out is no longer optional — it’s essential. One of the simplest yet most powerful tools to achieve this is a branded hashtag. Think of it as a digital signature that travels with every post, photo, or video you share. Unlike trending hashtags that spike and fade like a winter sun in northern Canada, a branded hashtag stays consistent. It is a symbol of your business, an identifier that your audience begins to recognise and remember over time.

Repetition creates recognition. Just as a jingle or slogan sticks in your mind, a branded hashtag imprints your brand identity into the minds of your followers. Every time someone encounters your hashtag, it reinforces the connection between the content and your business. This consistent visibility strengthens your brand’s presence online, creating familiarity and trust — two pillars of long-term engagement.

A branded hashtag also acts as a rallying point. When you create a hashtag unique to your business or campaign, you invite your audience to join the conversation. Every post that uses your hashtag — whether by you, your team, or your customers — contributes to a growing archive of content tied to your brand. This collective content, visible to anyone who searches or clicks the hashtag, builds a sense of community and shared experience around your brand. It’s not just marketing; it’s social proof in action.

Consider the psychology behind recognition. Our brains crave patterns and repetition. When we see the same symbol, phrase, or hashtag repeatedly, we begin to associate it with specific emotions, experiences, and values. A branded hashtag does exactly this: it links your business to the feelings you want your audience to experience. Over time, people don’t just recognise your hashtag — they recognise what it stands for. That recognition is priceless.

Branded hashtags also improve recall. Imagine a traveller scrolling through their feed and spotting a photo of a mountain lake with the hashtag #ExploreMerritt. Even if they don’t click immediately, the next time they think about planning a Canadian adventure, that hashtag pops into their mind. This recall can influence decisions, drive website visits, and ultimately convert casual browsers into loyal customers. It’s subtle, but highly effective.

Another advantage is the control it gives your business over your narrative. Trending hashtags might get you temporary visibility, but they also carry the noise of unrelated posts. A branded hashtag keeps your content anchored. It’s your story, told in your voice, and shared under a label that you control. Even when your content is reposted or shared by others, your brand remains front and centre. This ensures consistency and clarity in how your business is perceived.

Importantly, branded hashtags make measurement simpler. Because every post with the hashtag is trackable, you can analyse engagement, reach, and impact with precision. You can see which campaigns resonate, which content types perform best, and how your audience interacts with your brand over time. This insight allows you to refine your messaging, tailor your campaigns, and make informed decisions that strengthen brand recognition.

Creating an effective branded hashtag isn’t just about picking words. The best hashtags are concise, memorable, and easy to spell. They should reflect your brand personality, be unique enough to avoid confusion with other campaigns, and flexible enough to be used across different platforms and content types. Ideally, your hashtag is short, catchy, and versatile, ready to travel with your photos, videos, stories, and posts across multiple social channels.

In practice, the power of a branded hashtag grows exponentially when your audience participates. Encourage customers to use your hashtag when sharing experiences with your business. Feature user-generated content on your channels to show appreciation and amplify reach. This not only builds trust and loyalty but also spreads your brand organically. Every new post using your hashtag introduces your business to fresh eyes — potential customers who may not have discovered you otherwise.

Consistency is key. Introduce your branded hashtag early in campaigns, keep it prominent in all marketing materials, and use it without fail on social media posts. The more consistently it appears, the faster your audience begins to recognise it. And remember, building brand recognition is a marathon, not a sprint. With repeated exposure and thoughtful integration, a simple hashtag can become one of your most powerful branding tools.

In conclusion, a branded hashtag is more than a clickable label; it’s a vehicle for recognition, recall, and influence. By consistently using a unique, memorable hashtag, you reinforce your brand identity, create a sense of community, and ensure your content is always linked back to your business. It’s a simple tactic with far-reaching impact, helping your audience instantly associate content with your brand — even when shared by others. Start small, stay consistent, and watch your brand recognition grow.

So when it comes to SEO, GEO, and AEO, the three magical words are:

Authority, Experience and Trust

Here’s how SEOs can help build each one:

Authority

No search engine will tell you exactly how authority works, but one thing is clear: Earning backlinks, and even brand mentions, from trusted websites (especially in your niche) remains one of the most important ranking signals. Why? Because it involves human vetting. When a credible site links to you, it’s validating your content’s value.

Example: Outbound linking to Wikipedia and inbound linking to eh Canada Travel.

Experience

To build real experience signals, you need to do more than repackage what’s already out there. Be a true subject matter expert. That means going beyond basic search-based content and investing in original formats:

Video tutorials
Whitepapers
Case studies
Proprietary research
AI may be able to rephrase content, but it can’t replicate first-hand expertise.

Trust

Authority and links are part of trust, but it goes deeper.

To build trust, businesses need to demonstrate consistency, credibility, and reputation across the web. Here’s how SEOs can help:

Strong branded profiles on platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and even industry-specific forums like EH Canada Community and Profiles help show that real people stand behind the business.

Online comments and reviews, especially on niche directories, are major trust signals. The volume, sentiment, and recency of reviews are often used by both traditional search engines and AI tools to assess legitimacy.

Consistent branding and NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data across directories and citations also contribute to perceived trust.

Search engines are looking for more than just content, they’re looking for businesses that people trust in the real world. Your online presence should reflect that.

Learn What AI Retrieval Systems Favour

Platforms such as Google SGE, Bing Copilot, Perplexity, and ChatGPT browsing increasingly prioritize experience-based, narrative-driven content over generic destination summaries. Every piece of content created using our content marketing tools is already experience-based by design.

More specifically, AI retrieval systems favour:

Long-tail, place-specific authority

Long-tail, place-specific authority refers to building credibility and visibility by owning highly specific, location-based topics rather than chasing broad, generic keywords.

Long-tail – These are detailed, intent-driven searches with lower volume but much higher relevance.

Example search using long tail:

Not “best hikes Canada”

But “best shoulder-season hikes near Canmore with minimal elevation gain”

Fewer people search it, but the ones who do are ready to act.

Place-specific

Content is rooted in a real, clearly defined location—town, park, trail, neighbourhood, or region—and reflects on-the-ground knowledge.
Example:

Trail access points
Seasonal conditions
Local tips, closures, wildlife notes, parking realities
This signals authenticity, not aggregation.

Authority

Authority is earned by depth, consistency, and usefulness—not backlinks alone. Search engines (and AI systems) reward sources that repeatedly answer very specific questions about the same place better than anyone else.

Use natural language and narrative structure

It means writing the way people actually speak and think, using clear, story-like flow instead of stiff, keyword-stuffed phrasing, so the content feels human and easy to follow.

Clear user intent and context

It means the search or question clearly shows what the person wants and the situation they’re in, so the answer can be precise, relevant, and immediately useful.

Importantly, AI search is no longer just answering where to go—it’s answering whether a place is worth going to at all. Our content consistently explains:

Why a place matters
What makes it different
Who it’s for (and who it’s not)

What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

With intense competition from AI, search engines are focusing on AEO (Answer Engine Optimization).

The big challenge of today is that travelers are using AI-based search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Bedrock, Perplexity, and others.

AI-based SE’s provide link-free answers, offering less opportunity for websites to generate traffic, so to adapt, we need to embrace GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

THIS MAY SEEM LIKE A THREAT TO SEO, BUT IT REALLY IS NOT. THE TOURISM INDUSTRY JUST NEEDS TO ADJUST. Here is how we adjust:

Adjust Your Keyword Strategy

AI Overviews are not shown for every keyword. Some keywords are what we call “AI-immune”:

Service-based keywords (e.g. plumber near me, plumber Toronto) are unlikely to trigger AI answers. These behave like a digital version of the Yellow Pages, users are looking for a provider, not an answer.

Local keywords in general (those that include cities or regions) are also less likely to be answered by generative AI and are more likely to produce clicks.

Keywords That Trigger AI Overviews

Most informational queries (e.g. what is life insurance, how does SEO work) do trigger AI Overviews. These often result in zero clicks. That must be factored into content strategy and traffic forecasting—especially for top-of-funnel content.

So when it comes to SEO, GEO, and AEO, the three magical words are:

Authority, Experience and Trust

How Do I Edit My Story Content After it is Published?

Tips for editing your story content after publishing on Moose Academy.

So you have posted your story on the Travel Talk Community, your personal profile and throughout the website. But, you noticed something is wrong and you would like to add more content or, maybe, you would like to make a change or update it since you last posted it. Regardless, there are a few ways to quickly edit you published story blow and we tried to make it as easy as possible.

First You Need To Log In

Go to ehcanadatarvel.com and login. Once you are logged in and you have access to the editing tools for your stories, videos, and/or photo galleries you can begin editing.

Edit Using Avatar Drop Down List

Click your Avatar (top right of your page) to show the drop down list. From the drop-down list select Blogs.

Guide on editing story content after publishing at Moose Academy.

2. Select Manage from the Blogs dropdown list. From the Manage drop-down list select unpublished Drafts or select Posts for published stories.

Moose Academy students exploring nature in outdoor classroom setting.

3. From the lists of stories click on the story you want to edit. Start editing. Once edit or update is completed make sure to Save.

Edit Directly from Published Story

Once you are logged in, you can edit any of your articles (and yes even your parks) directly from the article itself. So, even as you are lurking around the site, profiles and so forth, when you come across any of your content you can edit from that page.

Once you have clicked on the article story to read or review, you will notice the page looks a bit different from when you are not logged in. The difference being that your personal profile tools and edit buttons are located in the top right corner of the article.

The Edit Tool is the pencil icon. Click on the pencil icon and you can start editing directly from the article. Make sure you save your edits when you are done or you will lose your edits.

Cycling Icelfields Parkway from Jasper to Banff, Alberta, showcasing scenic mountain views and outdo.

How do I build my Travel Profile?

How to create your personal travel profile page using the tools and features provided for participating members and small towns. The personal travel profile is your home base for all content created on the national and provincial award winning eh Canada Travel and Experience Community platforms.

There will be thousands who visit your profile every month. Spend the time and make it shine.

Once your profile is complete you are ready for your first post. Maybe it is an event or photo gallery.? Or start soft with a quick Media Blast introducing yourself. Engage with others and we all win.

How Do I Log In To Build My Profile?

Where Is The Log In Link?

Go to ehCanadaTravel.com.

On the front page of the website, at the top right of the page, click the Travel Talk link.

Log In on Travel Talk

In the top right corner, there is an icon with a little lock. Click on that and log in with the your user name and password. If you are not a member yet, click the text link (blue arrow) reading “register for an account”.

Logged In and Ready To Go

Once logged in, the first thing one should do is create your Personal Profile.

Parks/Trails Research & Preparation

Before you attempt to write your park, trail, historic site, lake, river, heritage walk information page please confirm your facts because you will need them for the content. It is wise to research Canadian outdoor adventure destination specifics like size of park, length of trail, difficulty, amenities on site, seasonal activities, type of fishing, travel tips, regulations, and directions from the closest major urban centre or airport.

Search Engines

Search engines are a good way to research parks and trails and other outdoor adventure destinations. Search the destination and make note of the specifics from other sites like regional, provincial and national park sites, provincial activity sites like fishing BC, national sites like Canada Snowshoe and so on. An alternative fun technique to use for research is #hashtags on your favorite social media channel. Click the hashtag and research what is currently happening at your destination.

Prepare Your Photos

The Park/Trail template for entering your content will require up to 8 photos maximum. Preparing your photos for content submission is vital to search engine positions. Please take the time to rename your photos using different high value associated words for each one. Mix them up. Do not duplicate renaming of any of the photos with the same words in the same order. DO NOT submit photos that look like “478642097r46230.jpg”, but instead rename them to something like “hiking-gros-morne-park-newfoundland.jpg”.

How to Share a Video Posted on Travel Talk Community.

You just posted a video and you want to share it from the Travel Talk Community to your social media page so to increase your engagement rate of your content. Good idea! Here are some easy steps on how to use the “social share” feature (link) on the Travel Talk Community to share your video on your social media page.

Step 1

Locate video on your personal profile travel feed or on the travel feed on the Travel Talk Community. It should be at the top if you want to share right away. At the bottom of the post are some links. Click on the “share” link to start sharing on social media.

Moose Academy students enjoying winter activities in a snowy landscape.

Step 2

Select social media channel you want to share to.

Screenshot of sharing a travel video on Moose Academy platform for travel enthusiasts.

Step 3

Add text with hashtags to the post and at the bottom click the button to publish it to your social media channel.

Step 4

Go to your social media channels and view the video. From your social media share to others and to groups so to increase the engagement rate.