Things move fast in the world of social media marketing. Topics and content that seem to take over our favorite platforms overnight can fizzle out just as quickly, only to be replaced by the next big thing.
Whatever niche your brand is in, positioning your content to take advantage of social media trends can be a fantastic way to gain exposure to new audience segments. To do this, however, you’ll need to keep a close eye on trends as they emerge, publish content promptly, and ensure you’re leveraging trends in a way that makes sense for your wider brand identity.
In this guide, we’ll look through five effective tips for using trends on social media and making your campaigns as effective as possible.
How to Keep Up With Social Media Trends
Before you take any practical steps towards marketing through social media trends, it’s important to learn how to keep up with social media trends so they don’t pass you by.
One of the most intuitive ways to keep up with social media trends is to use the social media platforms themselves. Some platforms have their own dedicated features which will curate trending topics, such as “Trending Now” on Threads.
For others, finding trends can take a little more work, like entering a keyword that’s topically relevant for your brand and studying autocomplete suggestions to see what the platform’s algorithm has identified as popular.
Another common way to identify social media trends is to use third-party tools that are built for the purpose, such as Google Trends or Exploding Topics. These can be especially useful for secondary research once you’ve identified a trend, as they show engagement over time. This makes it easier to determine whether a given topic seems to be gaining momentum or petering off.
Following industry news sources and thought leaders can also be an effective, “low-tech” method of keeping your eye on the ball and recognising trends as they’re on their way to prominence. As your feed is probably full of these news sources already, it’s best to filter them down by studying different news sites and influencers’ track records, prioritizing the accounts that show a pattern of making predictions that come true.
1. Find the Right Keywords
Once you’ve identified a trend you’d like to target with your social media marketing, the next thing you should think about is finding relevant keywords you’ll plan to include in your content.
Strategically including keywords in the content you post will help to increase your posts’ visibility, keep content relevant to the conversations happening, and maximize the chances of your brand being exposed to a wider audience.
The same tools you’ve used to pick up on trending topics, e.g Google Trends, are similarly useful for determining how social media users phrase topics they’re searching for. Plan your content by focusing on a main keyword or phrase, and accompany this with a few variations to give your posts an extra little kick of exposure.
When you’re incorporating keywords in your content, always make sure that you’re matching phrases to the planned content in a way that allows you to include them naturally. Crowbarring in too many keywords will make the content awkward to read and hurt the rate of engagement.
2. Choose the Right Trends
Not all trends are created equal. When you’re using social media trends in your marketing, it’s crucial to make sure you’re focusing on the ones that make sense for your brand and marketing goals, rather than latching on to trends just for the sake of it. Failing to consider the potential for controversy is a major social media pitfall.
When you see a particular topic gaining traction and getting tons of interaction on social media, the sheer volume of traffic it’s getting might make the trend seem like an appealing prospect. Though there are some pretty creative ways that brands can relate a certain topic to their product or service, forcing your brand into a trend just because it’s popular will feel awkward, forced, and in the worst cases desperate.
Before you decide to make any trend a part of your social media marketing, take some time to think about what’s driving its engagement. Be aware of how social commerce trends can be a driving change for consumer brands. Study the kinds of people who are interacting with it to see if there’s some crossover with your main target audience.
If a trend lends itself to content and conversations that are natural, authentic, and engaging to your audience, then you’re all clear to be a part of the conversation.
3. Keep It Simple
Putting thought and effort into your trend-aligned social media content will help maintain quality standards and increase the rate of engagement.
However, if you spend too long on one topic, making post after post all focused on a single trend, your accounts might come off as repetitive and seem like you’re pandering to the widest audience possible, instead of tailoring content to the people who are already engaged with your brand.
Obviously, knowing how much is too much can be difficult. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible! Making a point to diversify your content while staying on-topic, and keeping tabs on engagement metrics, can help ensure your content is highly engaging.
4. Stay On-Brand
Using social media trends in your marketing can be something of a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, you’re able to enjoy much more exposure than you might usually have by tapping into a switched-on audience. On the other, you’re not going to be the only brand that tries to capitalize from any given trend, and any piece of content you post will have a lot of competition.
With this in mind, it’s essential to stay on-brand with your planned posts and avoid creating content that’s too similar to that of other accounts. This is especially true when it comes to differentiating yourself from close competitors, who may use similar tactics to relate a trending topic to your industry.
As you plan your content, try to stay up-to-date with the posts and conversations being directed by rival brands. This will help you find new angles on the same topic, show you what to avoid in order to make the content uniquely yours, and encourage better engagement.
5. Talk To Your Audience
Obviously, your social media strategy is going to extend far past latching on to trends, and there are going to be other tasks you’ll want to move on to once you’ve lined up your trending topic content. However, it’s important not to simply push posts live, then call the task complete.
Once your content is live, following up by interacting with your audience will maximize the influence and value of your content.
By replying to comments and stimulating conversations under your posts, you’ll humanize your brand, open yourself up to valuable feedback for future campaigns, and increase brand awareness through the followers of accounts you’re interacting with.
Just remember to avoid conversations that are particularly controversial, or become too stuck in a certain viewpoint when talking about trends that are open to debate and interpretation. By maintaining a level of professional neutrality, you’ll keep your audience broad and avoid putting off potentially valuable interactions in the future.
Start Leveraging Trends
Leveraging trending topics in your social media content can present a lot of potential challenges. However, keeping your content timely, relevant, and unique to your identity will maximize the value of your content and help you ride the wave of a trend for maximum effect.
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