A trend is anything that catches the interest of a large group of people and gains momentum quickly. It could be a hashtag, catch-phrase, photo, video, an App or any other topic being talked about on social media and beyond.
Social media trends often emerge as a result of people looking for a way to share a particular piece of information with their friends and followers. The internet is full of funny, outrageous, or interesting tidbits of news and people are always in search of the next big thing that will titillate their senses and draw their attention. Trends are not limited to pop culture and entertainment but can also be found in the business world such as a bullish or bearish market trend or political trends reflecting a nation’s current mood.
Trending can be used to create an online buzz around a product, event, or service or to promote a specific campaign. It is important to understand how to use the trending feature on social media to ensure that you are getting the most out of it.
The trending feature on Twitter works by analyzing the activity of people using the platform and determining the topics that are receiving the most engagement. This determines the content that ends up being displayed as a trending topic. This process is automated and based on the overall activity on the platform at that time. The trending topics can be anything from a hashtag to a popular song to a celebrity’s name. It is possible to abuse the trending features by posting irrelevant or inappropriate content. This is discouraged by social media sites and in extreme cases may lead to a social media account being suspended.
If you are going to use the trending feature on social media, it is best to start by choosing a hashtag that hasn’t been used before. This will give you the best chance of creating a spike in activity that will be picked up by the algorithm and lead to your hashtag trending. It is also helpful to make sure that you are targeting a relevant demographic and the event or campaign is timely.
Google has a similar tool called Trends that allows you to see what is trending on all of the platforms that it covers including Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. However, it does require you to do a bit of searching through articles to find the exact trend that you are looking for. It is also not as accurate as Twitter’s trending board when it comes to specific topics.
Both Twitter’s and Google’s trends tools are great tools for finding out what is currently being discussed by a large group of people. You can also utilize these tools to get ideas for content that you can post on your own accounts. Trends data can also be useful to journalists and is often featured in news stories as an indicator of public opinion on a particular topic.