How To Find Social Media Trends That Can Boost Your Page Or Business
Trends these days are fun, but they are also ever-changing and highly fast-paced. Algorithms are constantly changing our FYP’s, and more often than not, small to medium businesses struggle to keep up. It’s not their fault, running a business alone requires you to wear many hats, but being an SEO expert is a whole other hat to wear.
The question then begs, how do we identify which trends to join, and which are the current ones that work? Aside from checking out Crunch School’s courses like their SEO Guide, you can also read some handy trend tips below that have helped others!
* FYP: For Your Page (Tik Tok’s homepage, or your normal timeline)
Why Are Trends Important?
Being constantly aware of what the current trends are will mean that you won’t fall behind in knowing what online audiences loved, hated or easily forgot about! Both scandals and good news have a short shelf life, so it’s also harder to keep track as they disappear from our timeline so fast.
With trends, you will be able to learn how it affects consumer behaviour and how you can extend their attention. For example, when a random person created a TikTok dance for Doja Cat’s hit single ‘Say So’, it became a hot trend. The singer then incorporated the dance into her music video, which got people wanting to listen and watch more, which indefinitely extended the number of times they replayed her song and danced to it!
However, note that some trends aren’t for everyone, like using a social justice movement hashtag to promote your resin business won’t necessarily help you acquire customers. When it comes to trends, it has to be able to suit the nature of your business or you as an individual. For example, if you’re a seller, using a hashtag like #sapotlokal would be perfect! If you aren’t, using it may seem very misplaced.
1. For Tik Tok…
TikTok is so different from Vine, but both apps had taken the world by storm when they both popped up on our Play stores. With how massive the following is on TikTok, it’s also a goldmine for people to try to gain exposure!
Firstly, trends like #smallbusinesscheck can teach you a lot of tips and tricks on how to run a small business. People also use this hashtag to promote their products. A great case study would be Fatini, a Malaysian student who created Lushpins – earrings but for Hijabis instead! She was honest about her struggles as a small business, and her video landed on TikTok’s FYP and got over 1 million views. Now, she has a 14,000 following on her business page!
Other trends to keep an eye out for on Tiktok are current popular songs! Using trending Tik Tok songs over your product video can let more unique impressions in, as the song that is currently popular will have listeners of different backgrounds. If they tap on to see the videos associated with the song, they’d see your video! So be sure to use songs that are currently ‘in’.
One caveat to be aware of: posting very different content to a trend may be very out of place. For example, the Runaway Aurora trend is of people posing gracefully, so that when the beat drops, the background changes to usually a beautiful sky. Trends like this are very specific, as everyone will be doing a certain action. If you suddenly posted a cooking video and used this song, people may skip it! It’s not bad to post opposing content, but pandai-pandai la okay!
2. For Twitter…
Twitter has so many different communities on it’s one of the apps with the largest group of active users. This is definitely a place you want to try to get into!
On Twitter, try to always look out for the daily Top 10 trending tweets. For any trending tweet, you’d be able to see how many people have tweeted about that topic! When you click on a hashtag or trend, you can actually read what anyone with a public account says – perfect to gather the public’s general sentiment about the topic.
Public sentiment on Twitter is usually what leads to social media slang that becomes the norm. For example, when the unfortunate LRT crash happened on May 24th, 2021 in Malaysia, Malaysians started mocking the then Prasarana Chairman, Tajuddin Abdul Rahman by using his own statement ‘Jangan probok-probok’ which means ‘Don’t provoke’. It became an overnight hashtag, and a few days later he was sacked.
Twitter slang is something you should definitely compile into a social slang dictionary. People will be able to resonate with you more if you use relevant slang.
3. Adopt The Newborn Concept.
One con of social apps is that most of the time, they have an algorithm that will tailor itself to suit your needs. Although this is great as it shows you the content you prefer to see, it inadvertently traps you in a social media bubble.
A social media bubble is essentially when an algorithm already knows what you like to see on your timeline. What happens is that anything that you don’t react or engage with, the algorithm most likely won’t show you that content. So for example, when news of the Al-Aqsa mosque shooting came out, people who don’t actively read or respond to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t see much of it on their timeline, despite it being worldwide news.
If you want to know about what’s trending or happening without having a tailored algorithm, I’d suggest keeping one account for your personal use, and another where you don’t save, retweet, like or engage on anything. So for example on YouTube, don’t log in using your Google account. On TikTok, get on the app without logging in as well. Both ways allow you to view a site without it automatically tailoring itself for you.
4. Have Realistic Insights.
When it comes to trends, not everyone can go viral overnight. However, virality does not always promise to give you what you want! There are a lot of cases when people go viral, but that’s just it. It goes viral, people read or watch it, but nothing happens after that. So not much increase in purchases or following. The key to any social media page or business is to always stay active and consistent with your social postings. Always remember that slow news is still news!
Another thing to keep in mind is that bad news – going viral for the wrong reasons, is still news at the end of the day and is publicity. For example, Neelofa was called out numerous times by netizens for double standards, as she allegedly held a wedding with many guests, whilst there were other normal citizens getting fined for smaller issues. However, the press talked about her for weeks, and that at the end of the day, is all free publicity.
Regardless of what’s the current hot topic, remember that missing out on a trend is not the end of life as new trends will always pop up! So don’t beat yourself up for not participating.
Trends can be your friends, and it’s usually never your enemy unless you have the #cancel hashtag coming at you. The easiest way to note when or not to join a trend is that it has to pass these 3 key tests: it is non-judgemental, not triggering, and isn’t causing harm. If those are passed, then feel free to jump on the horse and gallop away into the trend!
