Trendspotting: A Data-Driven Approach to Social Media Relevance
Insights from Kelly Hudson, VP Social Media
TL;DR: Savvy social media teams use data to predict what content will resonate with audiences, which includes keeping an eye on emerging trends to participate in culturally relevant conversations. To make sure you’re ready to strike when a trend hits, develop a plan to identify and assess trends with the following tips.
In this fast-moving social landscape, you need to do more than just scroll and hope the trends find you; you need a plan to proactively identify and evaluate them. This is where a trendspotting strategy comes into play, using social listening to uncover what’s bubbling up across channels.
The most effective social media teams are future-oriented, leveraging data to anticipate audience needs. And part of this is keeping a pulse on emerging trends, as participating in them helps brands connect through cultural relevance.
Think of trendspotting as an always-on form of research, where you’re using data and cultural shifts to identify trends that you can put your brand’s unique spin on. These opportunities can range from blink-or-you’ll-miss-it memes (think Kevin James smirking) to longer-term trends (more like brands with personalities) to enduring approaches (like leveraging user-generated content) and platform shifts (the rise of Reels).
Social media marketers use a variety of methods to spot trends, but any sound strategy should follow these basic steps:
Refine your tech stack. Get the right monitoring tools and subscriptions in place to help you sift through social conversations.
Pro tip: A few of the tools we use include Meltwater and Tagger, which each offer user-friendly interfaces for building highly customizable queries to monitor conversations across the web. Note that some tools charge based on the number of social listening queries you are actively monitoring, so be sure to pick ones that can scale to meet your needs.
Assess the landscape. To spot emerging topics and data shifts, you first need to understand the baseline. Lock in your process for staying plugged into your own brand metrics as well as what’s happening in your industry and across channels on a day-to-day basis.
Pro tip: If this seems like a lot to manage — especially if you have a small internal social team — consider partnering with an agency who can be your social media eyes and ears. KWT provides everything from real-time monitoring to weekly trend roundups to quarterly reporting, so you’re always prepared with the most relevant information at your fingertips.
Seek signals. Look at the data to see what’s driving spikes in volume, conversations clustering around similar topics, shifts in sentiment and above-average engagement. With more tools incorporating AI, it’s even easier to see this data at a glance.
Pro tip: It can be incredibly helpful to set up proactive alerts to be notified of any spikes in mentions, sentiment or new topics. We set these up in our monitoring tools but also supplement them with free services like Google Alerts or Talkwalker Alerts.
Dive in. Immerse yourself in the trend to understand what’s driving it, where it originated, who’s participating and its likely trajectory. This will help you determine if it’s still early enough to capitalize on it, as well as provide context for determining if it’s brand-safe and relevant to your audience.
Pro tip: We always head to the comments to make sure there are no red flags — but also to see what kind of language the audience is using. Integrating this highly specific vernacular into our execution strategy adds another layer of resonance.
Evaluate for relevance. Assess whether the trend makes sense for your brand based on what you’ve discovered and explore ways you could bring it to life.
Pro tip: If you’ve identified a substantial trend, think beyond just integrating it into your social media content calendar. Consider leveraging trends to add a bit of sparkle to anything from marketing campaigns to brand partnerships.
By following these steps and staying ahead of the curve (and your competitors), you can develop content that resonates with your audience, drives engagement and keeps your brand at the forefront of the conversation.
To see how our KWT Global team leverages trends, follow us on Instagram. And to learn more about how our social media experts help brands navigate trends, check out our services here.