Trending topics on social media used to be a big deal. They would grant bonus reach for our posts, and let us know what was popular, important, and leading the conversation each day. These were the days of hashtags being shown in the top right of TV programmes to help fans “join the conversation”.
by Ben Tysoe-Bailey
Daily, my routine as a social media manager involved checking what was trending that day, and seeing if we had a meaningful way of contributing to that conversation.
It wasn’t just to seem hip either. Trending topics and hashtags were helpful for two reasons, to inform our own content, so that we could reach a larger audience with material that was interesting and relevant to the discussion, and for research, so that we could plan and inform the organisation on what news stories and subjects were important and resonating. It was always a mixed bag, in between breaking news stories and political manoeuvring, there were 18,000 posts about Logan Paul that needed to be sifted through.
In today’s age of the algorithm however, I’m not convinced either of these still stand up, we might be at the end of the age of trending.
On most social networks, the trending tab has become a weird dusty relic, it’s home turf was always X (née Twitter), which largely existed to fuel the trending tab. In the old days (2010) entire inside jokes would spread across the whole platform, everyone would know the “main character of the day”. Buzzfeed was largely powered by writing up Tweets from the trending tab for people who were too old to use Twitter themselves, but too desperate to let go of the zeitgeist completely.
The trending tab of X today feels largely irrelevant. It no longer truly has any reach outside of X, and within the platform it sits neglected within the “explore” tab, which defaults to the “For You” tab, requiring another click to see what is winning the platform popularity contest.
Even if you find it, it’s filled with dull autogenerated tags and topics largely based around the news you already knew, like football results, political news and worldwide events, all stuff you can find better information on the BBC homepage. Gone are the inside jokes, and unique stories from the platform.
If you do spot a story that isn’t just “the news”, it’s likely clickbait, ragebait, misinformation or AI. While popular, these aren’t the stories that catapulted the trending bar to the centre of global conversation.
We know what the murder weapon was for the trending bar: For You. Personally focussed algorithms have replaced the platform wide topics almost across the board, from Facebook to LinkedIn to X.
And it’s clear why. Platform based trends are less helpful for advertisers, and, ultimately, less engaging than content that is personally picked and served to an audience.
Using a trending joke, hashtag or topic on X now feels like something from the previous age, but there is one place on the internet where we are still asked for trending material more than any other: The home of the sharpest haircuts online, TikTok.
But even on the home of the cutting edge, pursuing trends for reach seems to be dying out. Trending sounds and formats certainly serve a purpose (“We’re a young/hip/aware enough organisation to get the joke and join in”), but does it lead to an increase in reach? We’re not convinced.
Strong content will always outperform weak content, even if that weaker content is more current/on the vibe/using the latest trending sound or template. Why? Because the “broad audience” is now largely a myth. While TikTok does have tools to reach a lot of people, I’m not convinced that it has the means to reach a broad range of people with a single piece of content. Instead, you can reach high numbers of people within the niche of your content: Politics fans, cyclists, board gamer players, hip hop heads. Instead of reaching everyone, it’s more important to reach the right people. And on a platform as popular as TikTok, the right niche can still be several thousand people.
And I do believe a broad audience can be reached on TikTok, but I don’t believe it can be reached in a single piece of content, at least not because that content used trending materials. The more we use TikTok, the clearer it seems that a trend one person sees so often they are sick of it, might not appear to someone else at all. The algorithm is too personalised, too individual.
That leaves us with the second reason to check what’s trending. Research, planning, and remaining informed.
But even this is almost impossible. Facebook and TikTok will both try to predict what you want to see- warping the trending topics to match your interests. TikTok’s “Explore” tab is an ungainly mishmash of topics and posts going back at least six months, which in TikTok years, is the stone age.
What does this mean for comms?
Awareness days have largely been built around the trending tab, with the aim being to have enough tweets around a subject to make the subject trend, which will bring in more eyes, from others who spot the trend and investigate. Without a lively trending tab, the ability to push news into the algorithm of people that aren’t already “in the know” is significantly diminished.
Instead, we have the microtargeting offered by the personal algorithm, instead of framing content to join in with a joke or moment sweeping an entire platform, content needs to be focussed on a community, an interest, a lifestyle.
This makes more sense as following becomes a looser concept, the same “For You” algorithms that ditched the trending tab have also made followings less and less relevant (it matters much less if you are following an account on Twitter or Facebook, even interacting with it once, or similar content, will be enough for it to appear in your feed for the rest of time). Following on TikTok and Instagram is more of a guideline than a guarantee of seeing a particular persons content.
This loosening of the meaning of followers, and the death of platform trends, means almost anyone can see almost anything on platforms. The opportunity to target jocks like “DnD players” or nerds like “British American football fans” through the angling of our content alone, beyond followings, beyond trends is relatively new. Spending and ads will always help, but the rails that used to guide our social media viral reach are well and truly removed.
You know what they say, all good things must come to a trend.
Ben Tysoe-Bailey is Digital Communications Manager at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
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