Trending is a term used to describe topics or events that are popular on social media at a given moment. These trends reflect the collective interests and discussions of a community, including current news, cultural or other events, viral content, holidays, and online campaigns and challenges. Trends can be localized to a specific community, location, or context, or can have global impact depending on the platform’s reach and influence.
When a topic becomes trending, it means that people are searching for information about the subject. This information can be anything from celebrity gossip to political activism, from memes to recipes and fitness tips. The popularity of a particular trend can be determined by looking at search volumes on the Google Trends website or the Facebook Search dashboard. Trends can also be influenced by the activity of social media users, including the activity of influencers and brands.
A company like Pantone can be considered a “trend setter” in the sense that it distills trends into reports and predictions. However, the vast majority of trends are created by individual users of social media platforms, and this activity can have an immediate effect on what’s trending.
Trending can be an excellent way to raise awareness about important issues or events, but it can also be a powerful tool for businesses looking to drive engagement and visibility. As a result, it’s important for marketers to understand how trends are generated and used by their audiences so that they can take advantage of them.
While there is some evidence of human curation in the past, trending is now almost exclusively algorithmic. Videos are selected based on their view counts and growth rate, as well as the quality of their content and how broad the appeal is to YouTube’s audience. YouTube avoids selecting clickbait or sensationalist content, as well as any content that violates their community guidelines.
To see what’s trending on Twitter, open the Twitter app and select the “For You” or “Trending” tab. You can also visit the Trends page on Twitter’s desktop site.
When you see a topic you want to get in on, you can post about it by including the word or phrase exactly as it appears in the Trends list (with the hashtag, if applicable). You may not always be able to find your trending posts in searches, but your followers will still see them.
Using a tool like Ahrefs can help you discover the keywords that are trending in your industry and use them to optimize your marketing efforts. It’s a great idea to test out a variety of tools and approaches to determine which ones work best for your unique business needs. Just be sure not to over-optimize your marketing efforts, as this could backfire and cause unintended consequences. For example, Twitter discourages adding trending tags to posts that don’t relate to them in some way, and violating this rule could lead to your account being temporarily suspended.