How to Respond to Social Media Trends and Stay Relevant in a Dynamic Landscape
To help you navigate the ever-changing social media landscape, we’ve gathered insights from twelve industry leaders, including Senior Digital Marketing Executives and Chief Marketing Officers. From leveraging videos and trend-analysis tools to using personal feeds and joining trends, these experts share how they keep their companies at the forefront of social media trends.
How to Respond to Social Media Trends and Stay Relevant in a Dynamic Landscape
Tip 1
Leverage Trend-Analysis Tools
Kshitij Gulati, Senior Digital Marketing Executive, Broadcast2World
Videos play a crucial role in social media marketing by enhancing engagement and delivering messages vividly. They hold viewer attention and foster emotional connections, translating into higher conversion rates. Visual content resonates, making complex ideas digestible.
To stay current with social media trends, many companies use trend-analysis tools and closely follow industry influencers. An example adaptation might embrace short-form video content like TikTok or Instagram Reels, leveraging the trend of quick, engaging videos to reach a broader audience, especially younger demographics. Adjusting content style and embracing new platforms can keep a brand’s social media presence fresh and competitive.
Staying updated with social-media trends is like trying to keep up with the latest sneaker drop—blink, and you’ll miss it.
So, how do we stay in the loop? We’re always learning, be it through webinars, deep dives into new features, or just some good old-fashioned trial and error. You’ve got to roll with the punches and be willing to get your hands dirty.
Video was our game-changer a while back. We noticed everyone was glued to short video stories on platforms like Instagram. Instead of watching from the sidelines, we jumped in. We started crafting bite-sized video content, and guess what? It was a hit. The engagement shot up, and our clients were thrilled. It’s all about adapting and finding that spot where trends meet authenticity.
To stay updated in the dynamic social media landscape, we consistently monitor our competition and active accounts from related industries. Every two months, these insights become the focus of brainstorming sessions with our marketing teams. Collaboration became a cornerstone of our strategy.
As a result, we introduced our annual awards, amplifying our presence on Instagram, our website, and our newsletters. We tagged the top free-tour providers, driving a surge in subscriptions and clientele their way. In return, these grateful providers shared their accolades and tagged us. We collaborated in a genuine, non-promotional way. This delivered more visibility and growth for both parties.
Tip 4
Create A Social Media Inspiration Channel
Logan Mallory, Vice President of Marketing, Motivosity
In order to keep our finger on social media, we created a “Social Media Inspiration” channel within our company Slack. We share all of our ideas and new findings there. As people are off the clock but consuming their own social media, they’ll share posts or screenshots with that channel, which ends up driving a conversation once we’re back at work.
It’s a simple solution, but by creating a place to aggregate the ideas, we’re more consistently and proactively thinking about how to keep up with social media trends.
Buckle up, because our social media strategy’s like a chameleon on a roller coaster! We ride the trend waves like a pro surfer—thanks to our Social Media Sleuths. These digital detectives mine data like there’s no tomorrow. Remember that viral dance? Yup, we knew about it before your cat could moonwalk!
But wait, there’s more. They cooked up a “Trend Tracker Algorithm” that’s sharper than a porcupine’s picnic. It sniffs out rising trends and potential viral stars. Case in point, when virtual reality catwalked into fame, we pounced with AR filters that turned pets into couture models.
The result? Engagement flew off the charts like a UFO on caffeine. Remember, folks, we’re not chasing trends; we’re riding them like a cowboy on a rocket-powered bull!
We stay updated through regular trend analysis. One adaptation was leveraging the “Stories” features on platforms. We noticed declining engagement on traditional posts. By embracing Stories, we tapped into the trend of ephemeral content, resulting in a 25% increase in engagement within three months.
This dynamic approach kept us aligned with changing user behaviors. Monitoring trends, experimenting with new features, and analyzing results are essential. Being agile in adjusting strategies to match evolving platforms and user preferences is pivotal for sustained relevance and competitiveness in the ever-evolving social media landscape.
Tip 7
Run Analytics Before Content Production
Carolyn James, Consultant and Trainer, Website Insights
I run analytics first to better understand the current social media trends before I produce content. My approach is to react to these trends by understanding patterns on shares, engagement, interactions, and other meaningful KPIs.
Posting marketing campaigns without the proper analysis of trends and relevant data is, to me, like a spray-and-pray strategy. Whereas, running website analysis to inform these social media content is more about acting on data, facts, and patterns.
We participate in webinars and industry conferences to learn from experts. We keep up with the latest social media trends this way.
We also join webinars and conferences online. This expands what we can see, and we join online communities through it as well. We can gather insights in this way too. We remain relevant by incorporating polls and quizzes. Including interactive elements in videos has helped us a lot.
To stay abreast of emerging social media trends, we employ real-time social media monitoring tools that track mentions, hashtags, and keywords relevant to our industry. This allows us to quickly identify new trends and adapt our social media strategy accordingly.
One specific adaptation we made was the incorporation of interactive polls and quizzes on our social media platforms. With the rising trend of interactive content, this approach has significantly increased user engagement and provided us with valuable consumer insights.
The digital landscape is ever-changing. Consistent monitoring and quick adaptation are key to staying relevant and competitive in the social media space.
Tip 10
Overlay Social Data With A Plugin
Steven Wright, Co-Founder and Chief Editor, Lifestyle to the MAX
Social media is known to pick up trends before they appear in the search landscape, such as Google. A useful Chrome plugin for this is Glimpse, which overlays social data onto Google Trends. This tool provides more insights than Google Trends alone and also indicates where the content is most in demand, for example, on TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
Relying solely on social insights is not sufficient, and additional data sources are necessary to inform our strategy. Overlaying social trends onto your search data is crucial for creating a content strategy that is forward-thinking, topical, and in demand.
Staying ahead of social media trends involves embracing content personalization and user-generated content (UGC). Today’s users seek tailored experiences. By modifying our strategy to encourage our followers to generate and distribute content about our products or services, we foster a sense of community and produce authentic content that resonates with our audience.
Utilizing UGC not only cuts content creation costs but also ensures that our content stays fresh and in line with current trends. This strategy maintains a competitive advantage by staying in tune with our clients’ interests and the changing social media landscape.
Staying on top of emerging social trends starts with natural, organic exposure. This can look like using your personal feeds, as well as checking on the leading accounts in your industry.
The bulk of trends begin on Twitter or TikTok, then make their way to other platforms. The next step is exploring which trends are gaining traction quickly to stay ahead of it.
If a trend matches your target audience and brand voice, it’s always worth it to join in! Participating, even if the trend lacks longevity, will keep you in the social conversation your audience is having.
How to Respond to Social Media Trends and Stay Relevant in a Dynamic Landscape
You’ve heard what the experts had to say, now it is your turn. Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.
