If you’re a digital marketer, you’re probably familiar with the term “trending.” Trends are topics that are popular on social media at a given moment, often reflecting current events, cultural or other trends, viral content, holidays, and even online campaigns and challenges. Trends are highlighted by social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to encourage discussion and engagement among their users.
There are a number of tools you can use to find and analyze trends. One is Google Trends, which displays data visualizations of trending searches based on time and location. You can filter the trends by topic or keywords, and you can view search volume over time to see how interest in a particular topic has changed over the past several months or years.
Another tool is Buzzsumo, a platform commonly used by content and SEO professionals. Its “Trending” feature scans social networks to identify the most popular hashtags. It also allows you to create custom feeds based on keywords, domains, or locations. You can also track the performance of specific hashtags over time by using a tool such as Tweet Binder, which analyses Twitter trends to help you identify potential opportunities for your brand.
A final tool is the Facebook Trending page, which highlights trending conversations and topics based on your location. Its algorithm prioritizes topics with high spikes in volume over those that have steadily increased or declined in popularity. This can result in some topics being buried or removed from the Trending list if they don’t show a sustained spike in activity.
As a result, the Trending page can sometimes be inaccurate or misleading. For example, Felix Kjellberg (better known as PewDiePie) is a YouTube creator who has criticized Trending because it doesn’t always reflect his interests and the topics people are talking about on the platform. He has also said that Trending is a “business decision” to keep advertisers happy.
In the case of Twitter, the algorithms that determine what is trending are based on a combination of factors including a high volume of searches for the hashtag, as well as the speed at which the search spike occurred. However, Twitter doesn’t disclose all of the factors that go into making a hashtag or topic trending.
The most important thing to remember when analyzing trends is that they are only as accurate and useful as the data you input into them. For this reason, it’s best to combine multiple methods of research and analysis to gain the most valuable insights. This way, you can make informed decisions about how to leverage trends in your marketing efforts.