There’s never a dull moment on social media, especially when it comes to trending topics and conversations about viral moments. Things move really quickly online, and new internet memes and challenges pop up daily. With all of this online activity, it can be really difficult to simply keep up with these conversations, let alone figure out when it makes sense to join them… but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible!

Here are some tips for how to find and join conversations about trending topics online.

Uncovering Global Conversations

The internet is a vast place, with new conversations starting every moment. (Did you know that nearly 9,000 tweets go out every second on Twitter!?) With this much activity, it could take a lot of energy to filter through conversations and understand which to join. To avoid getting overwhelmed, it’s helpful to start in a few key places.

• Google Trends: Google Trends allows you to explore the popular topics that people are searching for through Google. You can discover what’s trending in your region, across the country or even around the world.

• Twitter Trends: On Twitter, an algorithm brings attention to topics that people are talking about the most recently. They are words and phrases, and oftentimes specific hashtags. Twitter has been known for hosting many viral moments. If you remember “The Dress” from 2015, this is a perfect example of how a trending topic brought thousands of people together.

• Media Sites: Media sites like Buzzfeed often pick up on social media trends nearly immediately. If you’re looking to become in-the-know about what people are talking about online, you can usually get decent summaries from media roundups on the topic.

Check for trending topics often, as some global conversations emerge over the course of weeks, while others attract widespread attention almost immediately. 

Understanding Your Niche

In addition to checking trends for conversations that take place on a national or global scale, there’s value in exploring what’s happening within your niche. This will allow you to find specific topics that are popular within your industry.

• Visit search engines or Google Trends, and type in industry-specific keywords. For example, if you’re in the publishing business, perhaps you’d want to start with a search like “publishing trends 2020.” You can also visit trade sites that speak to hot topics within your industry.

• On social media, follow accounts that regularly report on newsworthy conversations in your field. You can also sift through different hashtags that are used often by others in your field.

While it’s certainly important to pay attention to broad conversations happening online, when the topics are more specific, you’ll have less clutter to sift through and a clearer understanding of the trend and how people are creating content around it. This can help you more easily decide whether or not you want to join in.

Deciding Whether to Join

When a viral moment is happening online, it’s not uncommon to want to react right away and take advantage of all the visibility you’ll get by participating. It’s worth taking a moment, though, to decide whether it’s right for your business to join in on the conversation.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as the gatekeeper of your brand to help you decide if it makes sense to participate in a viral moment:

• Who is involved in the conversation? Are they people I want to align my business with?

• Is the topic relevant to my customer base? Would they understand and find it appropriate for my business to post about it?

• Is the conversation popular because it is inflammatory and/or hurtful, or because it is funny and/or uplifting? How does it reflect the core of your brand, and the image you want to portray on its behalf?

• Do I have something to say about the topic? Given my position in the industry, am I uniquely qualified to offer expertise?

There really isn’t much benefit to joining in on a trending topic just for the sake of participating. It’s best to ensure that you can add value to the conversation with your content, and that your customers would not only understand the reference, but would also appreciate the action.

Adding Value With Content

If you’ve decided that you’d like to join a trending conversation online, that’s great! Now, it’s time to think about how your business can add value through your content.

• Will you comment on or share content that’s already been created about the topic?

• Will you write something as a reply on Twitter?

• Will you film a video or design a graphic to convey your perspective?

• Will you encourage further engagement from your customers?

Depending on how quickly the trend is moving, it doesn’t always make sense to invest a lot of time and resources to create a highly produced piece of content. Sometimes, scrappy and organic will do the job just as well - and won’t cause you to be too late to the conversation because you were working on a project that was more sophisticated than you needed.

Timely & Trendy

It can be scary to commit to participating in a viral moment online, but it can also be a wonderful way to show your customers your relevance, and potentially get your content in front of a global audience. While mega-trending moments don’t always happen every day, by keeping up with the conversations online, you can be ready for the next one that does!

If you feel you could use some support with identifying trends and revamping your social media marketing strategy, the team at Doukas Media is happy to help!

Have you ever joined in on a trending conversation? How did it work out for your business? Did your customers appreciate it? Let us know in the comments!