Competition for exposure in the digital space is getting more challenging every day. Algorithm shifts are devaluing content from brands in favor of updates from friends and family, causing brands to see drops in reach and engagement as less of their audience are seeing their content in the newsfeed. It’s important to find ways to break through the noise and reach customers in creative ways that gets their attention and retains it.

Tapping into trending topics, holidays and national conversations are great ways to connect with your followers and reach a new audience. Brands should find a balance between creating evergreen content and seasonal or trending content.Popular events such as the Olympics are a great way to generate buzz on social media.

Focusing on trending topics means you’re creating content that your target audience is already looking for or is interested in. Taking advantage of the buzz around a topic or a popular hashtag can get your brand and content in front of new eyes, creating an opportunity for an increase in followers and engagement. Keep in mind that it’s much easier to tap into something that is already relevant and on people’s mind than to create something new and build a buzz around it.

What are trending topics?
Big commerce defines trending topics as subjects that experience a surge of popularity on one or more social media platforms for a limited period of time. This can be buzz around a holiday, sporting event, breaking news, movie premiere, popular culture and viral content. The duration of popularity can last from a few days to more than a month when it comes to big holidays or sporting events such as Christmas and the Olympics.

Identify what’s “trending”
Start by creating a content calendar of topics that happen regularly. Think about everything from #MeatlessMonday or #SuperBowl to #CincodeMayo. Identify the major holidays and events throughout the year that you can tie your existing content to. If your brand has a great grilling recipe on your website, be sure to share it out in the summer, especially around Memorial Day and July 4th when people are actively searching for grilling ideas. Get creative with more unique trending topics like #SharkWeek or #ReadABookDay. Creating a calendar at the beginning of the year also allows your team to identify missing content from your bank.

Aside from the obvious holidays and national events, tap into alternative holidays, such as food holidays or general trends throughout the year. Think back-to-school, summer vacations and spring-cleaning. Your content does not need to perfectly match up with a trending topic. Find creative ways to link the content around your products or services to these trends.

At Produce for Kids, we focus on creating and sharing healthy recipes for families. We don’t have a traditional donut recipe on our website, yet when the popular food holiday, National Donut Day, rolls around, we share our healthier 5-Ingredient Apple Donuts to tap into the social media buzz while staying true to our brand.

In addition to plannable trending topics, there are also those hard-to-predict trending topics like a popular meme or pop culture news like the Yanny or Laurel craze. There are a number of online tools, like Buzzsumo, Google Trends and Epicbeat, that can help identify trends and popular search terms around a given time frame or location.

How to create content around trending topics
Find ways to create content that’s relevant to your brand and audience. There will be trends that simply do not fit in with your brand messaging and that’s OK. There have been instances where brands have jumped on a trend or made themselves part of a conversation without understanding the context and the outcome hasn’t been positive. Take time to research new trends before dedicating time and funds to creating content around that topic.  

Create content that people can respond to. It should be a two-way street. It’s not enough to gather impressions. Use your brand voice to communicate with the audience and ask that they communicate back. It’s about starting an engaging conversation. You’re not only communicating to your audience, but also hopefully communicating to a new audience that may choose to follow your brand.

Produce for Kids launched the Power Your Lunchbox campaign five years ago to take advantage of the yearly trending topic of back to school. The buzz was already there, but we needed to create content to stand out in the conversation. Our solution was a campaign that encouraged families and classrooms to make healthier lunch choices using our health-conscious brand partners’ products while also giving back to Feeding America. Our content took shape in the form of recipes, videos, infographics, blog posts, podcasts and user-generated content from the #PowerYourLunchbox hashtag.

For each campaign, we research the newest innovative lunchbox products and concepts and create new content around what’s trending. In addition, we round up the best lunchboxes, water bottles, lunchbox notes and more for parents to purchase in the Produce for Kids online shop. Our blog content is focused in on back to school and ways to make it an easier and healthier experience for families.

While it’s important to consistently show up on the social outlets where your audience is, jumping in on trending topics can also allow you to get in front of new customers who don’t regularly interact with your brand. Incorporating a trending topic calendar element to your 2019 digital strategy is just one more tactic to help you expand influence in the digital space.

(Grace Vilches is the marketing coordinator of Produce for Kids)