Maisie Lloyd
I'm passionate about recording the world, but most of all driven by creativity and collaborative environments. My experience revolves around the production of digital content, pertaining to graphic design, writing copy, and video and audio content.
What is a trend?
A trend is recognised as a pattern, it shows that people are responsive to a campaign, topic, brand or person over a period, and then typically a trend will naturally lose traction.
Trends can occur across all sectors, and as such trends can influence the styles of the seasons, formats of videos, and behaviours and lifestyle choices.
As a trend gains traction, people engage with it, perhaps they buy into it, or at the very least contribute to the discussion that enables a thing to trend. These collective behaviours of audiences are what make trends an invaluable tool for marketing strategies.
Why are trends so valuable in marketing?
Trends now symbolise a moment in time in which something was relevant to the masses, which is why it’s important to jump on them when they’re appropriate. As a brand, you should be creating content to demonstrate to your audience that you are relevant. This can help shape the way new and existing audiences perceive the brand (select a trend with intention and a plan).
A trend can also provide a bit of respite for generating ideas. Take TikTok content as an example, the video format or style is typically pre-determined. All that needs to be done is to find a way to combine the trend with your overall objective, and then produce the content. An example scenario of how this may apply:
Let’s say there’s a video of a person saying “This. This is perfect” which may have gone viral due to the usability of the sound. Then other creators would use the audio out of context to support whatever piece of content they have. It would then be posted to socials where it is engaged due to the trending audio having sentiment around it.
Because Trending audio, videos and hashtags tend to have a page on platforms dedicated to them, it makes the content visible to all those adding to the trend, or who are engaging with it. This increases the reach and visibility of these pieces of content as it is positioned at a much larger audience.
What’s particularly useful with this, is like-minded individuals who aren’t aware of the brand, are more likely to see the content because of the algorithm frequently displaying trending topics.
Trending content often reflects customers’ behaviours and preferences, which is a valuable tool for better understanding your audience. This can then help inform your future marketing strategy by identifying what the audience is most receptive to.
How to follow a trend?
1) Identify the trend
The most important part of this step is staying up to date with what is going on across the varying social platforms. This means instead of having to look for the right trends, they should start to find you.
2) Identify the relevance to your brand
Don’t just hop on a trend because it’s happening. Instead, select the trend you partake in with the intention of it benefiting your overall strategy. Only select trends that are likely to benefit your brand, even after the trend has passed. Ultimately your content needs to have some form of value, other than the sentiment attached to the trend.
3) Take a step back and re-interpret the trend in a way that will be relevant in 6 months to 6 years.
Similarly to the last step, consider its relevancy in a few months. For people who aren’t aware of the trend, you want the content to still serve them. So, try to bring something to the content that honours the trend but will have value for your customer down the line.
4) Outline how you’re going to fit your content to the trend
Map out how you are going to record the content and create a plan which outlines the visual or audio elements you need to collect.
5) Go out and create
6) Utilise all relevant audio, visuals, copy or hashtags associated with the trend to display the content alongside other creators.
When you publish the content, you need to ensure that it is going to be uploaded to the right place and check that any hashtags, audio or visual elements are included. You will then need to publish the content and prepare to track the analytics.
7) Analyse your content
Analysis is almost the most important stage apart from the content itself. The data allows you to analyse what is and isn’t working, to optimise future content to the preferences and behaviours of the customers.
We’d love to know if you’ve ever hopped on a trend, and if so, what was it?
