How to Connect Your Brand to Social Media Trends

Every day, consumers interact with social media platforms and meet a variety of trends. For brands, the question arises of how to connect your brand to quickly changing and evolving social media trends. The ability to connect your brand to these trends can advance your brand’s online presence, as well as grow and expand your online community.

Monitoring and Keeping Up with Trends

When connecting your brand to social media trends, it is best to have an idea of how you will monitor and keep track of these trends. Luckily, there are several impactful tools that make this process easier. Sprout Social is a useful tool that not only allows you to track your own brand’s social media presence, but allows you to also track specific keywords, mentions, and comments across various platforms. This tool allows you to view data in real-time, and monitor the change in activity for said data. By having this data monitored, you can see which keywords are more popular and spot potential trends.

Hootsuite, a social media listening tool, is another excellent tool that allows brands to track a wide range of information. This tool allows businesses to track what customers are saying about them and allows them to jump in at any time to reply to comments. Additionally, Hootsuite is a great tool for tracking social media trends. It allows users to track popular hashtags to trending topics for the day. By looking at trending hashtags and keywords, brands can be aware of which topics are popular. Hootsuite is a great tool for tracking your own company as well as seeing what trends are popular that day.

It is also beneficial to practice trendspotting. Trendspotting is the practice of recognizing trends before they become mainstream. Acting as a fellow customer or consumer on social media will allow you to notice external trends that you may not catch when you are looking from inside a brand’s perspective. You should also be monitoring the internal trends of your brand. This looks like observing what products customers are looking at, what customers are doing, and what your industry looks like from the customer’s viewpoint. By watching both the internal and external trends, you will find bridges in ways to connect your brand to said trends. While it is important to use larger tools, it can be largely beneficial to have a person act as a consumer looking at your brand.

Larger trendspotting tools can also be precious, such as Google Trends. Google Trends, a free and useful tool, allows you to look at the popularity of specific keywords, hashtags, and topics in all locations. It is useful data to have access to and can help you monitor popular topics at specific times.

Know your Brand

When connecting your brand to social media trends, this connection needs to feel authentic and natural. First and foremost, you should be aware of the brand you are representing. From knowing your brand personality, the products and services you offer, your audiences, and your values: these factors will all allow you to be more authentic in connecting your brand to social media trends.

While it may be tempting to connect your brand to as many trends as possible, that is not a practical or proper way to go about using social media trends. Every trend that arises may not be the proper trend for your brand, and being able to recognize which trends you can successfully connect your brand with will guide you to greater success. Some things to consider when connecting your brand to trends are what social media platform you are using, and who your target audience is. It is important to perform market research so you have a specific audience and platform in mind when using a trend. Also, consider the goal your brand is attempting to achieve through the use of the trend. Are you trying to form a closer relationship with your audience, like responding to comments and community management, or are you looking to grow and expand your brand’s audience?

It is important to stay consistent with your brand throughout trends. While trends and popular topics have some variety, do not stray too far away from your brand and what you represent. If your brand jumps from very different trends with different personalities it may be confusing for consumers to understand your brand identity. If you have determined that a trend fits with your brand, and will help develop it, act in a timely fashion. Trends come and go and if you are using a trend correctly it is important for the timing to line up with the trend.

What Can Bright Age Do?

Monitoring trends on various platforms can be difficult, and Bright Age is here to help! Through a thorough social media marketing process, and quality content creation our services will help gear you towards impressive social media content for specific social media trends. By having a deep understanding of the brand’s market and identity, social media trends will be a successful tool in enriching your online presence across various platforms.