Using Trends in Social Media – How to Get Your Business Noticed With Social Media

What is trending? On Twitter, a keyword, term, or even topic which is being discussed more than the others is deemed to be a trending topic or just a “hot topic”. Hot topics also gain popularity either due to an event which prompts people to discuss a certain topic or just out of sheer curiosity. So what makes a trending topic “trendy”?

To answer this, let us take an example of some Twitter trending topics. When I log in to twitter, I see different colored squares in the navigation panel. The size of each square is proportional to how many people are discussing that topic. Green means that a lot of people are talking about it while red means it’s one of the hot topics of the moment.

There are other tools which display the conversations happening on Twitter as well. On top of the square containing the number of people talking about a trending topic, you will see a line with a number representing the volume of conversation. The longer the line and the thicker it is, the more active the conversation. For instance, if a topic is trending and there is a large amount of discussion, then this trend is pretty active. In order to take advantage of trending topics, you need to find relevant hashtags.

What makes a trending topic trendy? The reason why it is trendy is because there is a possibility for a lot of conversations about it. There could be a big debate on it within a few days or weeks. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve celebrity gossip. Even a single tweet can ignite a firestorm of discussion and get a lot of people talking about it.

So how can you make sure that your social media campaigns are driving the right kind of trending topics? The answer is to start using the most relevant hashtags for your niche. Start looking at your competitors’ hashtags and see what they are doing to drive their conversations and build their community.

Watch out for the wrong trending topic. Just because a trend looks interesting on twitter doesn’t always mean that it is going to catch on in real life. The same goes with using inappropriate keywords for trending. If you are trending for YouTube, make sure that you are actually focusing on YouTube and not some obscure low end blog or social media site.