In today’s digital landscape, leveraging trending topics is crucial for content marketing success. With countless voices competing for attention online, creating content that resonates with your target audience is essential.
This comprehensive guide will teach you how to:
- Identify the most popular trending topics through various online platforms
- Evaluate and select the right trends for your business goals
- Create compelling, engaging content that positions your company as an industry leader
By the end, you’ll have the knowledge and tools to capitalize on trending topics, attract more readers, and grow your business.
Chapter 1: Understanding Trending Topics
What are trending topics?
Trending topics refer to breaking news, viral hashtags, popular figures, and watercooler conversations capturing public attention at any given moment. They reflect the ever-shifting interests, questions, and fascinations of online audiences.
Platforms like Google Trends, YouTube, and Twitter make trending topics easily visible through dedicated pages and hashtags. Savvy content marketers tap into these trends as inspiration for blog posts, social media updates, and other content.
Why Do Trending Topics Matter for Content Marketing?
Covering trends serves two key goals:
- Attract More Readers: Trending topics pique reader curiosity by covering fascinating or important current events. Aligning your content with trending topics allows you to capitalize on this existing interest.
- Building Industry Authority: Analyzing trending news through your business lens establishes your company as an insightful industry leader on the pulse of current events. Readers will come to rely on your perspective.
In essence, leveraging trends creates content people inherently want to read right now – an invaluable asset for driving traffic, leads, and sales.
How Trends Can Shift Quickly
Unlike evergreen content with long-lasting appeal, trending topics often enjoy a moment in the spotlight. News cycles evolve rapidly, hashtag discussions fade, and viral sensations burn bright and then fizzle overnight.
This transience means trending topics must be identified and leveraged quickly before they pass from public consciousness. Having your finger on the pulse of the internet is crucial.
Fortunately, as we’ll explore the next section, tools exist to detect rising trends across websites, social media, and search engines – key to catching topics gaining momentum early on.
Chapter 2: How to Find Trending Topics
Google Trends
Arguably the most powerful trend insight tool is Google Trends. As the backbone of Internet search, Google has unparalleled visibility into what captures people’s interest across regions, languages, and categories.
Let’s break down of how to use Google Trends to reveal valuable trending topics:
Homepage Trends:
The Google Trends homepage automatically surfaces popular rising searches. These often relate to recent news or events driving queries.
This is a great starting point for discovering new topics gaining traction. Pay attention to search breakouts – quickly rising queries indicating a new trend emerges.
Customized Exploration:
For more specific trends in mining, visit the Explore page. Here you can enter keywords, operators, categories and multiple filters like country, period, search type etc. to uncover hyper-targeted trends.
Analyze the output graphs and related topics. Look for breakout searches and topics within your industry.
Pro Tip: Leave the period wide open or select ‘past 7 days’ to catch very recent trend shifts.
Social Media Discovery
Beyond Google, social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok also indicate emerging trends through hashtag usage and dedicated trending topic features.
Here are some tips for tracking trending topics on social:
Twitter:
- Check the ‘Trending’ or ‘For You’ sections for trending hashtags
- Click hashtags in tweets to see full discussions
- Use Twitter listening tools to detect rising hashtag volumes
YouTube:
- Visit YouTube’s Trending tab, customize by region
- Identify trending themes across top videos
- Check YouTube searches on Google Trends
Instagram:
- Notice widely used hashtags under photos and videos
- Check out social listening tools for trending Instagram hashtags
- Explore trending Instagram meme accounts
TikTok:
- Identify popular sounds, songs, challenges, and hashtags
- Use third-party TikTok analytics to determine fastest growing trends
Chapter 3: Evaluating Trends for Your Business
Not all trends are right for your content marketing. Before covering a topic, evaluate its relevance to your goals, brand, audience and industry.
Follow this checklist:
- ✅ Define target audience parameters like location, age, interests
- ✅ Aligns with the ideal customer buyer’s journey stage
- ✅ Related to your brand and industry
- ✅ Provides genuine value to your readers
- ✅ Distinct perspective not covered by competitors
- ✅ Evergreen appeals beyond the immediate trend cycle
- ✅ Strong reader interest signals in your analytics
- ✅ Opportunity to incorporate keywords
If a trending topic checks most of these boxes, it likely makes for a smart content fit relevant to your readers and business aims.
Pro Tip: Also examine trends covered by industry leaders and sites your audience follows. If a topic resonates across your niche, consider aligning unique content around it.
Chapter 4: Creating Compelling Trend-Focused Content
Once you’ve identified promising trends, it’s time to transform them into magnetic blog posts, social updates, and visual content. Follow these best practices for success:
Brainstorm Unique Angles
Avoid obvious takes and rehashing of what other outlets cover. Brainstorm what exclusive perspectives, commentary, tips and insights only your brand can provide.
Aligning Trends to Audience Needs & Questions
Go beyond surface commentary to answer audience questions and address how the trend impacts their lives. Deliver truly useful content.
Incorporate Interactive Content
Leverage polls, surveys, quizzes and other interactive content to boost engagement.
Feature Visual & Video Content
Photos, gifs, graphics and videos related to the trend make content more eye-catching and digestible on social media.
Include Target Keywords
Research keywords people search around the trending topic and organically incorporate them into your piece.
Promote Across Channels
Share your content through email lists, paid ads, website banners, relevant online groups and influencer outreach for maximum visibility.
Monitor Performance
Analyze page views, social engagement, leads and sales to see which trending topics resonate most with your audience. Duplicate this successful formula.
Conclusion
We live in an age when viral online phenomena can drive mainstream media coverage and catalyze societal conversations – with new trends emerging constantly.
As a content marketer, leveraging these trending spikes in attention can provide a powerful window to engage your audience amid fierce competition.
But trends fade, so you continually need to identify rising topics across news and social media using the tools and frameworks outlined here.
Most importantly, evaluate trends against your brand filters to create relevant, differentiated content that builds your authority around topics that matter right now.
Execute this process effectively, and you’ll intercept audience attention as excitement swells around impactful events – helping drive website traffic, social growth and conversions over the long run.
FAQ: Finding & Leveraging Trending Topics
1. What are the main benefits of creating content around trending topics?
- Increased website traffic and visibility
- Ability to tap into the reader’s curiosity
- Building industry authority and thought leadership
2. What makes an effective trending topic to cover in my content?
- Relevant to the target audience
- Unique angles not covered by competitors
- Ties back to your niche or brand
- Evergreen appeals beyond the trend cycle
3. Where can I find the latest trending topics online?
- Google Trends
- Social media trending sections (Twitter, YouTube, TikTok etc.)
- News sites and blogs
- Trending topic aggregators
4. How do I know if a trending topic is worth covering?
- Use checklist from evaluating trends section
- Aligns with your goals and audience
- Strong interest signals in analytics
5. What’s the best way to transform a trend into compelling content?
- Brainstorm exclusive angles
- Answer audience questions
- Interactive content
- Visuals and videos
- Promote widely
6. Should I stick to evergreen content or cover trending topics?
- Balance of both is best
- Trends bring timely traffic; Evergreen has longevity
7. How long should I ride a trending topic for content?
- Speed matters, trends fade
- Leverage trend attention swiftly
8. How often should I scan for new trending topics?
- Daily scans are ideal for catching rising trends
- Curate social listening alerts on key issues too
9. Can anyone create successful content around trends?
- Niche relevance and distinct POV essential
- Trends amplify existing audience appeal
10. What common mistakes do people make covering trends?
- Rehashing existing takes
- Jumping on fading trends too late
- Failing to make trends specifically relevant to the audience