Keeping up with trends – 4 quick tips and a case study

Make sure you are always on your audience’s minds and lips by keeping up with trends and using popular hashtags.
Make sure you’re keeping up with trends to stay on people’s minds (and lips).

I personally love this strategy, because you get to really get creative and break out of the usual methods you might use while generating content.
Another awesome reason for absolutely loving keeping up with trends is that there are some really funny or creative posts out there, so researching them is really fun(ny) as well!

A hugely successful Twitter account that does that magnificently is Oreo (yes, the cookie), which is rocking its social media channels each and every single time with trendy, up-to-date and genuinely funny graphics and copy-writing.
What they do, basically, is take an on-going trend and find a way to involve their product in it, even if it has nothing to do with it at all.

Google also have gained a great reputation of milking the April fools trend to the last drop by creating ingenious (and elaborate) productions and web-app easter eggs. Of course they don’t really need to do that for brand awareness, what they’re really doing it for is their online community, to strengthen bonds and create new ones.

What we can learn from that

A quick jump outside our comfort zone, or simply outside the box, will go a long way for your brand on (and off) social media, showing your audience a more whimsical and friendly side, helping them to get closer and press that Like or Share button.

In case you’re a brand new business trying to spread the word about your existence, this is a great method to also show you’re human and are approachable. Of course you should try to keep a genuine level of humor, since you’re gonna have to stick with it throughout your entire social media strategy’s humoristic posts.

In case you’re already known and are struggling with being the market’s choice amongst your competitors, creating a friendly image and keeping up with trends so that you’re making sure your followers share that image of yours, will majorly help that message get out there.

Case study

A certified training center client of mine already has some social media following but for the last few years, they couldn’t manage to make those followers interact and share their content. Their main error was posting exclusively commercial posts, talking about their offers, courses and some news.

Our first step was to identify their followers and potential clients, which was pretty easy, actually:
Most of their clients were working people, sometimes experts in their field, sometimes trying to become exactly that, so news about products they were using (mainly software, but also hardware) was an obvious choice. Next on the list were designers and artists who came to perfect their skills or learn new ones, so articles and images from other artists and designers (typography, urban art and photography were some all-time favorites).

Last, but not least, we had the tech nerds, each in his own field, wether it was programming, web development or hardware technicians, they all had a few things in common (did someone say StarWars?), so choosing content for them, in which keeping up with trends was easy, since internet trends and memes are always a crowd favorite.

What your next step should be

Try keeping up with trends in order to create some traction and help your following grow and become more interactive:

• Research and follow some of the high ballers in the field to learn some tricks and get some ideas for your own business social media channels.
• Keep up with trends by reading a lot online (and on paper) to make sure you’re always in the know and are up to date.
  Get creative and come up with funny and whimsical posts for each and every world event, but be tasteful.
• Unlock a hidden treasure by adding humor and interest into your posts which will create a much more eager and interactive following.
• Doing this will help you create posts which will be interacted with much more and help you gain Likes and Shares for quick, free and easy advertising!