How Can Businesses Use AI to Identify Emerging Trends On Social Media?
In the fast-paced world of social media, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for content strategy and campaign success. We’ve gathered insights from founders and marketing directors on how to harness AI-powered tools, from leveraging AI-driven social listening to utilizing Sprout Social for trend analysis. Dive into these eighteen expert perspectives to identify and capitalize on the latest social media trends.
How Can Businesses Use AI to Identify Emerging Trends On Social Media?
Social Listening Software powered by AI, like Hootsuite Insights, monitors vast amounts of social media data in real time. AI-driven social listening tools analyze mentions, hashtags, keywords, and sentiment across multiple platforms. These tools can detect spikes in conversation around specific topics, allowing businesses to identify emerging trends as they happen. This helps businesses determine how to engage with them. Then, the AI can segment audiences based on demographics, location, and behavior, offering deeper insights into who is driving the trend and how it might relate to your target market.
By understanding emerging trends, businesses can create content that resonates with what audiences are currently interested in. You can also launch campaigns at the optimal time, capitalizing on trends before they peak or fade. This increases the chances of content going viral or campaigns achieving higher engagement rates.
I use Buzzsumo to identify trending topics, popular content, and key influencers. This tool helps me stay ahead of the curve. It offers some amazing insights that are invaluable for content strategy. Buzzsumo will let you know which topics are gaining traction; businesses can tailor their content to reflect these trends, increasing the likelihood of engagement and shares. This helps in staying relevant and positioning the brand as a thought leader in the industry.
Highperformr is a really good one. When most people think of “trends,” they’re picturing headline news or the latest tech shaking up the scene, but there’s so much more to it, especially for your own crowd.
The Highperformr analytics suite is loaded with features that help you dig into the trends that matter to your audience and spot patterns to guide your future campaigns. With their comprehensive analytics tool, we’ve been able to catch onto things like shifts in brand sentiment through their social listening platform, or see which types of content—like images, text, videos, or links—are hitting home with our audience. It also shows which media types are doing well across the different social platforms we use.
They provide profile-specific engagement reports too, which show the behavior trends of social media users who match up with our ideal buyer personas. And there’s a look at growth funnel engagement trends, all highlighted by their intuitive AI assistant.
One AI-powered tool businesses can use is PPC Ads Competitive Intelligence GPT. It analyzes competitors’ PPC ad campaigns to identify emerging trends, keywords, and creative strategies. By using these insights, businesses can align their content strategy and campaigns with trending topics, ensuring they resonate with their audience and stay ahead of the competition.
Tip 5
Explore Trends with AlsoAsked Queries
Lydia Valentine, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Cohort XIII LLC
One AI-powered tool I’d recommend for spotting and taking advantage of emerging social media trends is AlsoAsked. It’s really simple to use—you just enter a keyword related to a trending topic, and it gives you the most popular related questions people are asking. For example, if you search for “HR tool,” it might show queries like “What is an HR toolkit?” or “What are the major HR activities?
Even though it’s mainly seen as an SEO tool, it’s also great for tapping into social media trends for your campaigns. Let’s say there’s a big news story in your industry and everyone’s talking about it, but your competitors are already owning the conversation on social. You can use AlsoAsked to find different, popular angles on the same topic, giving you a chance to grab more attention for your brand. This also comes in handy if you’re a bit late to a trend and need to stand out with fresh content ideas.
Influencer identification tools like Traackr or AspireIQ are game-changers for businesses seeking to stay ahead of social media trends. These tools use AI to analyze vast amounts of data, pinpointing influencers who are already driving conversations around emerging trends. Think of them as your scouts, scouring the digital landscape to find individuals who can amplify your message effectively.
Working with these trendsetters can dramatically boost your content strategy and campaign planning. Engage with influencers identified through these tools to create authentic and compelling content, ensuring it resonates with your target audience. One practical tip: use influencer data to segment your audience more precisely. Knowing who your influencers are can offer insights into who follows them, helping you tailor your messaging and possibly even your product offerings to better meet the needs and interests of your audience.
Brandwatch is one social listening and analytics software that businesses can use to spot and profit from new trends on social media platforms because of AI. This platform enables organizations to quickly identify patterns, track customer sentiment, and understand consumer behavior by using advanced AI methods to analyze massive volumes of social media data in real time.
Brandwatch finds popular themes and hashtags across various platforms, giving marketers the data they need to create content that contributes to the conversations of the day. Ensuring that the content is current and relevant increases engagement rates.
By analyzing people’s feelings regarding specific themes, businesses can tailor their messaging to appeal to the values and emotions of their target audience. With this data, campaign strategies and tones can be adjusted to more accurately reflect the emotions of the intended audience.
AI tools can be used to track the social media activity of competitors and provide insightful data on the plans and tactics that work best. Setting reasonable performance targets and benchmarks for social media initiatives is made much easier with the use of this data.
Companies that determine who is influencing the debates and share content about specific trends can tailor their marketing strategy to better target these influencers and key demographics.
Based on past data and trend research, AI algorithms can identify the best times to post and the kind of material that is most likely to attract audiences.
Businesses can use Brandwatch to stay ahead of social media trends, enhance their content strategy, expedite campaign planning, and establish more effective audience connections. This results in marketing campaigns that are more responsive, effective, and focused, and that fit in with the constantly shifting social media landscape.
TrendSpottr is an AI-powered tool I swear by for spotting and leveraging emerging social media trends. It has transformed our approach to content strategy and campaign planning.
This tool excels at detecting trends before they go mainstream. I’ve used it to catch early chatter about topics that later blow up. It once detected early rumblings regarding a major change to a Formula 1 rule. Because of this, my team and I were able to produce content that our audience wanted to see before others did.
So, what TrendSpottr does is that it empowers you to act fast and decisively. You’re crafting relevant content and campaigns while others are only catching up. Because it’s really not about timeliness, but more about being the first to offer value on soon-to-be hot topics.
In a nutshell, TrendSpottr helps you steer conversations, not just join them. If you want your content and campaigns to pop and truly connect with your audience, it’s simply a must-have tool in your arsenal. This is our go-to tool at F1Blast.
One handy AI tool for spotting emerging trends on social media is CrimsonHexagon. It dives into audience sentiment and behavior across various channels, helping businesses catch on to shifting interests and trending topics. By tapping into these insights, we can tweak our content strategy to better connect with our audience. For instance, we use these insights to craft timely campaigns that resonate with current trends, boosting engagement and visibility on our social platforms.
AI-driven audience segmentation tools can revolutionize how businesses understand social media trends. By analyzing vast amounts of data, these tools identify emerging demographic patterns, helping companies like ours tailor their offerings to underbanked populations.
For instance, platforms like InsightIQ provide access to over 400 million creator profiles, enabling efficient influencer marketing. This allows businesses to craft content strategies that resonate with specific audiences, ensuring campaigns are both relevant and impactful.
AI-powered sentiment analysis tools are one of the hottest ways businesses are using to identify and capitalize on emerging social media trends. These tools go beyond simple keyword tracking, analyzing the emotional tone and context of social media conversations at scale.
By processing vast amounts of unstructured data in real-time, sentiment analysis can uncover subtle shifts in consumer attitudes before they become mainstream trends. This insight allows businesses to pivot their content strategy swiftly, aligning with emerging interests and pain points.
For campaign planning, this technology enables hyper-targeted messaging that resonates with specific audience segments. The key is using these insights to create authentic, timely content that feels organic to the platform and genuinely addresses user interests and needs.
There is a trend on Instagram at the moment where account owners ask ChatGPT to “roast” their feed. I did this for our small business Instagram account, and it was brutal. However, this led me into a deep conversation with ChatGPT about how we could improve our content.
It gave us some useful ideas and suggestions. It pointed out areas for improvement and even gave us a recommended color palette and posting schedule. It also pointed out relevant trends for our brand and identified trends we had used.
We’ve recently been implementing the recommendations and have noticed an increase in engagement and levels. While I won’t be using ChatGPT to completely plan our social media content, I will certainly refer to it more often when planning.
Businesses can try Talkwalker. It pulls data from 150 million sources, including social media, video platforms, social forums, and news sites. Due to the wide data pool, Talkwalker efficiently identifies trends before they hit mainstream media, giving you a valuable head start. There are more than 50 filter options to customize your trend discovery to your specific niche, ensuring you focus on emerging topics that resonate with your target audience.
The insights will give you the popular keywords and phrases that you can include in your content pieces to run your campaigns. You will also identify the popular hashtags associated with the trends and use them in your social media posts for better reach and visibility.
Tip 14
SEMrush for Trending Keyword Tracking
Chris Aubeeluck, Head of Sales and Marketing, Osbornes Law
AI-powered keyword tracking tools like SEMrush provide valuable insights into the keywords and phrases that are trending across various social media platforms. By leveraging these tools, businesses can identify emerging trends and quickly optimize their content to reflect these popular topics.
For example, if “remote work tools” becomes a trending keyword, a tech company can optimize its blog content or create targeted social media campaigns around this topic. This real-time adjustment not only increases the content’s relevance but also helps the business connect with a broader audience interested in the trend, ultimately enhancing its market positioning.
One AI-powered tool businesses can use to identify and capitalize on emerging trends on social media platforms is social listening software, such as Brandwatch or Sprinklr. These tools leverage AI to analyze vast amounts of social media data, tracking mentions, hashtags, and keywords related to your industry. They can detect patterns and trends as they begin to emerge, allowing businesses to stay ahead of the curve.
By using these insights, businesses can inform their content strategy by creating content that resonates with what’s currently trending. For example, if the tool identifies a rising interest in a particular topic or product, you can quickly develop content that taps into this trend, ensuring that your messaging is timely and relevant.
Moreover, this data can guide campaign planning by helping businesses identify the best times to launch campaigns, the most effective platforms to use, and the type of content that will engage their audience. By aligning your strategy with the latest trends, you increase the chances of your campaigns being noticed and shared, ultimately leading to greater brand visibility and engagement.
With my experience in marketing, I’ve found that one of the most effective AI-powered tools for identifying emerging trends on social media platforms is topic modeling.
Topic modeling uses algorithms to identify a large text dataset’s underlying themes or topics.
By applying this technique to social media data, businesses can uncover the most discussed topics, identify emerging trends, and understand how these trends evolve.
For example, if a business is interested in the fashion industry, it can use topic modeling to identify emerging trends such as sustainable fashion, athleisure, or gender-neutral clothing.
This information can then inform product development, marketing campaigns, and content strategy.
Tip 17
Predictive Analytics for Home Security Trends
Tomasz Borys, Senior of VP of Marketing & Sales, Deep Sentinel
Social listening platforms with predictive analytics offer a powerful way to identify and capitalize on emerging social media trends. These tools analyze online conversations across various platforms to predict trends, assess sentiment, and identify key influencers in the home security industry. For us, this technology can inform content strategy by detecting rising concerns, identifying popular topics among target audiences, analyzing competitor performance, and optimizing content based on engagement metrics.
To implement this approach, we monitor relevant keywords, create content that addresses emerging issues, time product announcements strategically, and adjust messaging to align with current sentiments. By leveraging these insights, we can ensure our marketing remains timely and resonant—driving engagement and staying ahead of industry trends. This data-driven strategy enables more effective content creation and campaign planning, ultimately strengthening Deep Sentinel’s position in the competitive home security market.
Tip 18
Sprout Social for Trend Analysis
Nikhil Bharath Kumar Induri, SEO Specialist, Branding Experts
One AI-powered tool businesses can use to identify and capitalize on emerging trends on social media is Sprout Social’s Trend Analysis feature. This tool leverages AI to monitor conversations, hashtags, and keywords across multiple social media platforms, providing real-time insights into trending topics within a specific industry or among a target audience.
Sprout Social’s AI analyzes massive amounts of social data to identify shifts in conversation patterns, sentiment, and engagement. By processing this information, the tool uncovers trends and emerging topics that are gaining traction but may not yet be mainstream. For example, if a sudden spike in conversations around a particular product, hashtag, or cultural movement is detected, the AI will flag this as an opportunity for businesses to engage early.
Content Creation: Once emerging trends are identified, businesses can quickly create relevant content that resonates with the current social media climate. For instance, if a new health trend is gaining attention, companies in the wellness industry can produce blog posts, videos, or infographics tailored to that trend before their competitors.
Campaign Timing: Timing is crucial in social media marketing. AI tools like Sprout Social not only identify trends but also provide insights into the best times to launch campaigns based on audience activity and engagement patterns. This ensures that content is delivered when the trend is most likely to gain visibility.
Audience Targeting: AI-driven trend analysis also helps in refining audience segmentation. By tracking who is engaging with certain trends, businesses can tailor campaigns to reach the right demographic at the right time, boosting relevance and engagement.
Hashtag Optimization: As part of trend monitoring, Sprout Social identifies popular and emerging hashtags related to the business or industry. Incorporating these hashtags in posts can expand organic reach and visibility.
By harnessing AI-powered tools like Sprout Social for trend identification, businesses can stay ahead of the curve, create timely, relevant content, and optimize campaign strategies to maximize engagement and impact.
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