Trending happens when a specific topic, hashtag or keyword becomes more popular than normal on a social media platform such as Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram and receives more impressions and interactions than usual. To find out what’s currently trending, you can visit that platform’s “Trending” area of the Explore tab.

A lot of times, getting your content or brand in the trending list of a social media site can help you reach more people and get them engaged with what you have to say. This is because the trending topics usually talk about things that people are interested in and if you can get your content or brand to be one of them, it could lead to a boost in engagement on all your posts.

The list of trends is typically curated by the social media platforms themselves and based on what people are talking about in real-time. They may also be influenced by events or things happening in the news and as a result, they become more prominent than normal.

In order to be in the trending lists of Twitter and Instagram, you need to have a minimum of 100 followers and your content must follow their rules. For example, they can’t be hateful or offensive and should not include profanity or explicit content. They also have to be relevant and not offensive to the majority of their audience.

To determine what’s trending, social media platforms analyze a percentage of searches for certain keywords or topics and then display them in the sidebar of their Trending pages – Twitter’s Trends page is located here – or the Discover page on TikTok and Instagram. It’s important to note that the popularity of a particular word or phrase can fluctuate and it can be difficult to predict how long the trend will last or even if it will come back in the future.

Twitter’s algorithm for trending topics is not openly known, but it can be manipulated to some degree. This can be done through strategic use of hashtags and the emergence of viral content. For example, when the San Bernardino shootings occurred, people used the hashtag #SanBernadino to show their support. Twitter has also tweaked its algorithm in an attempt to prevent such manipulations and make the list more accurate.

You can use Google search trends for SEO by using a tool like Semrush to analyze the search volume and keyword difficulty of your terms. This can give you a good idea of what kind of traffic you can expect if you rank for those terms and how hard it would be to do so. To get started with this, type your keyword into the Google Trends tool and click on it to see a graph. This will show you how much the term has grown or fallen in popularity over time. This information is valuable when creating your SEO strategy. It can help you understand what your competitors are doing that’s working and also identify potential opportunities for growth.