A trending topic on social media reflects what a significant number of users are discussing, sharing, or interacting with at a given moment. This is often influenced by current events, viral content, seasonal themes, and coordinated marketing campaigns. Understanding and leveraging trends can help businesses, brands, and individuals increase visibility and engagement on their social media accounts and search engine results.

Trends are displayed on the left-hand side of Twitter’s homepage and within the Explore tab. Many social platforms also personalize the trends shown based on a user’s location, previous likes or searches, and who they follow. For example, a Twitter user who follows the President may see tweets about that individual in their trending feed; whereas, someone who follows a lot of people who collect ceramic mugs might be more interested in seeing trending topics related to that specific hobby.

While it is possible to game the system by adding unrelated keywords or hashtags in an effort to make a post trend, this behavior can actually lead to a decline in overall visibility on the platform. Additionally, abusing a trending topic can result in a temporary or permanent ban on the account.

The good news is that businesses can use trends to their advantage by creating relevant and timely content that aligns with the interests of their audience. For example, a retail company may track fashion-related trends to stay ahead of industry changes and create timely promotional offers or product updates that resonate with customers. Conversely, a tech company might track technology-related trends to stay informed about the latest advancements and develop new products or services that address their audience’s needs.

As mentioned above, creating relevant and timely content that aligns with a specific trend can boost visibility and engagement on a business’s social media accounts and search engine results. However, it’s important to remember that trends change rapidly and what’s popular one day can be old news the next. As a result, it’s important to prepare templates and response frameworks to ensure that the brand is ready to react quickly when an opportunity arises.

Aside from boosting visibility, using trends can also help businesses and brands to gain credibility and trust by appearing to be in tune with what consumers are talking about. It’s important to be careful, however, when it comes to participating in trending conversations about sensitive subjects, such as tragedies or political events. Getting it wrong could have serious consequences, such as a business’s post being seen as insensitive or offensive to the victims and their families.

While it’s possible to find trends on social media platforms, there are also a number of third-party resources available that can help businesses research and identify the most impactful trends for their industries. For example, Buzzsumo is a content ideation tool that offers a “Trending” feature that scans social media for the most popular content in a specific industry and displays it in a digestible format. The downside of this resource is that it requires a significant amount of time and effort to scan through all the content to uncover trends that are applicable to a particular industry.