Catching the latest and popular trends can be one of the most effective ways of increasing visibility for your social media pages. To successfully incorporate the current trends into your social media and business requires awareness, appropriation, and lateral thinking.
Gotta Catch ‘em Early
“Nothing gets older faster than something new” and this is pertinent when adopting a trend into your social media marketing. Staying relevant is key to your visibility and SEO so knowing what users are currently talking about should be a priority. Be constantly vigilant on the likes of Twitter and Facebook for subjects and stories that are causing a buzz.
Trends Incorporated
One of the biggest trends we’ve seen in 2016 is the huge success of Pokémon Go, and it’s a phenomenon that provides an excellent example of how a trend can be incorporated into a social media campaign.
The AR mobile app has created an intoxicating and addictive blend of the nostalgic and new and millions of users around the globe have been obsessively collecting Pokémon on the app over the last month. Pokémon Go has been a gift for location-based marketing and has been seized upon by many businesses as they proudly proclaim themselves a PokéStop/Gym or have dropped lures (a micro-transaction item that generates more Pokémon at a certain location), but for digital companies it still creates plenty of opportunities through social media channels by understanding what users are looking for when searching online.
In Pokémon’s case, users are most interested in finding out where the best and new locations are to find Pokémon. By reporting on these locations on your social media outlets, you increase your visibility by offering users exactly what they are searching for. This kind of awareness of the language and aims of users engaging with trends is vital, and refining the terms you are using is worth the effort as it crucial to remember when capitalizing on a trend that millions of others are doing exactly the same.
Not all trends are going to apply to your business, but when something that has such huge and universal appeal of Pokémon Go it’s often worthwhile to use some lateral thinking if the association with your business isn’t always obvious. For instance: if a business deals in outdoor pursuits equipment then its relation to a video game isn’t immediately clear, but Pokémon Go requires players to do a lot of walking so that company could do a Facebook ad for hiking boots for users to wear while playing the app.
Surf the Trends
Overall, utilizing trends in your social media campaigns is a lot like surfing: try to catch the trends early so you can ride them to their peak then disengage with them as they begin to die off. If you miss a trend or it’s not appropriate for your purposes, there will always be a new one starting to swell that’s right for your business.