How Social Media Trends Start (And How To Start One Yourself)
How do social media trends take off? Is it possible to start one yourself?
Do you ever wonder about the origin of some of the social media trends we see?
Sometimes they don’t hit our feeds until they’re quite popular. By that time, the original has been overshadowed by the sheer number of posts participating in the trend.
In this post, we examine what ignites social trends as well as how you can use those results to create your own.
What are social media trends?
Social media trends are representations of things that are currently popular on social media.
They could be a product, sound, phrase, dance, challenge, song or anything other creators can recreate on the platform the trend exists on.
Trends aren’t new to the world. Fashion trends have existed in nearly every century of civilization, and we can spot trends in human behavior as well, such as the trend of going “trunk-or-treating” instead of “trick-or-treating” for Halloween or announcing the gender of a baby with an extravagant gender reveal party.
To put it simply, trends are a new product or activity that a large group of people use or take part in.
But while some real-life trends result in permanent changes to human behavior, social media trends often fade as quickly as they start.
How to spot social media trends
Not every popular post you see is representative of a social media trend. This is because viral posts and social media trends are not the same thing.
Viral posts are simply popular, individual posts that have been viewed, liked, shared and commented on a lot.
Social media trends are popular elements of a post a lot of social media users recreate themselves.
If you suspect a post is a trend, interact with it. Like it, at the very least. Watch it all the way through if it’s a video. You can even comment on it or share it.
That way, the platform’s algorithm knows you’re interested in seeing more posts like that one. You’ll start to see more and more posts about that trend if the original post you like is part of it.
If you’re not sure, do a little investigating.
If the post has a hashtag, click on it, and see if you find similar posts in the results. Do the same if the post has an audio that seems like a trend.
If it has neither, search for the trend.
On TikTok, some videos have suggested search queries you can click to search for something related to the post you just viewed.
You can even use tools like RiteTag, Inflact and Google Trends to see what’s currently trending on social media and the web in general.
Do social media trends become popular off of social media?
Sometimes. The Stanley cup trend is a popular example of this.
Not only did it lead to people who aren’t familiar with the trend buying these cups based on recommendations from friends and family who are familiar with it, other brands started mimicking the product or coming up with their own on various marketplaces in hopes of getting consumers’ attention.
However, most of the time, social media trends stay on social media. They rarely even jump from platform to platform let alone real life.
Trends that are popular on TikTok may not be as popular on Instagram when videos are reuploaded there, and vice versa.
We’ll talk more about this later.
Why are social media trends important?
Social media trends are fleeting, and some are a little silly, but they should not be overlooked. This is especially true if you’re using social media as a primary marketing channel.
This is because social media trends have the potential to get your brand noticed by the general user base of a platform.
Niche-specific trends will get you noticed by your niche.
Like I said, when you interact with a certain post and watch it all the way through, you send signals to that platform’s algorithm that lets it know that you’re interested in that content, the topic it’s about, the sound it uses or its creator.
You’ll start to see more content from each of these categories in your feed.
The same happens to your target market.
If they like posts that belong to a certain trend, they’ll see more posts like it. If you participate in that trend, you have a higher likelihood of appearing in their feeds.
Creating your own trends is important as well, or at least the attempt to do so.
This is because the extra effort you put into a post you want to turn into a social media trend will naturally create higher-quality content that’s engaging and shareable.
How social media trends start
While social media posts and trends are different, most trends begin with a single viral post.
It’s what’s within that viral post and how much it resonates with viewers that determine if that post has the potential to turn into a trend.
Here are elements other social media users can take from a post and recreate, turning the post into a trend:
- Challenge – An activity or task users can perform, such as a fashion trend, sharing personal details, etc.
- Product – Specific product that’s currently popular
- Sound – Original audio that can be lipsynced in new videos
- Phrase – Sentence or word other users can mimic in their own posts. Sometimes this trend can be used as a “finish the thought” or “fill in the blank” kind of activity
- Dance – Similar to the challenge element, but this one is focused on a common type of challenge you often see on TikTok
- Song – Sometimes songs go viral on social media. When this happens, users often upload posts set to the song even if the post isn’t necessarily related to it
- Filter – Fun and engaging social media filters sometimes trend, especially on TikTok
- Style – Filming or photography styles other users can recreate in their own videos
- Comedy – Comedic skits that can be recreated with new but similar content
Posts that contain any of these elements can resonate with viewers and inspire them to try and recreate it in their own posts.
What happens to those posts determines whether or not the element turns into a trend.
Sometimes the element gets recreated by a popular influencer. Because this influencer regularly receives a lot of views, their recreation of the element gives it a higher likelihood of it turning into a trend.
Other times, it just takes a lot of users to recreate an element of a post to turn it into a trend. At that point, it likely already went viral by the time influencers take part in it.
When it comes down to it, the most important ingredients a post needs in order to turn it into a trend is a hook or engaging quality and something other users can recreate.
Examples of social media trends
Roman Empire trend on TikTok
This trend began when a woman asked her boyfriend one simple question: how often do you think about the Roman Empire?
He was confused about why he was being asked about this, but answered honestly: once a week.
Because his answer shocked not only his girlfriend, but most women in general, he inadvertently went viral on social media, receiving 13 million views, 1.8 million likes, 94,900 shares and a whopping 12,200 comments.
His answer was so shocking, in fact, that many women felt compelled to recreate the video themselves and ask the men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire.
“My Roman Empire” has even become a popular phrase to depict something you think about a lot.
It’s a simple trend, but his simple answer was shocking and engaging enough to encourage others to take part in the trend.
Throwback Thursday on Instagram
Before TikTok, Instagram trends ruled social media. One of the most popular trends social media users still take part in is Throwback Thursday.
According to Vox, the origins of the phrase dates back to 2006 when Matt Halfhill published regular Thursday posts on his shoe blog that were dedicated to old shoes.
The popular hashtag #throwbackthursday was used on Twitter a few times before Instagram user @bobbysanders22 used it to showcase a small collection of matchbox cars.
It still took a little time for the phrase to get more popular on social media, but once it did, social media users from every corner of Instagram began using the phrase to share old photos, usually of themselves.
How to join a social media trend
Joining a social media trend is pretty easy, but outdoing videos created by other users can be difficult.
Determine who you want to reach by participating in a trend: your target market or general social media users.
If you want to reach your target market, try and come up with a way to attribute the trend to your niche.
If you want to reach general social media users, come up with an idea that’s a little more generic and not related to one specific thing.
Watch as many versions of the trend as you can. It’ll give you a lot of examples to base your ideas off of and will even inspire your own idea.
The most important thing is to recreate the trend as closely as possible.
However, doing the trend incorrectly may lead to higher engagements as social media users may be surprised by how close yet off base you are. Just be sure not to purposefully do something wrong to the point where users accuse you of creating “rage bait.”
Things to know about social media trends
There are two things you need to be careful about when it comes to taking part in trends.
The first is how quickly trends tend to fade.
It’s not uncommon for trends to only last a few weeks. If you see a trend you want to join in your feed, check its upload date or the dates of its most popular comments.
This will let you know how recent the trend is. “Recent” on social media means within the last week, not a few weeks ago or last month.
The second thing to be careful about is how you incorporate trends in your marketing strategy.
Trends are not a time to promote your products. They’re meant to be fun, so you’ll only annoy social media users by promoting your products in them.
When you take part in a trend, just try and have fun. They’re great for raising brand awareness when you approach them this way.
How to create your own social media trend
You should have a pretty good idea of what it takes to create a post that has the potential to launch a social media trend by now.
To recap, the post needs to be engaging, and it needs to contain something your audience can recreate.
Consider the niche you belong to, and review some common trends you’ve seen within it. This will give you a starting point to base ideas off of.
Consider something you can do in a video that your viewers can recreate.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Share a photo with a certain theme, such as you in work shoes that are falling apart
- Create a filter for your niche that generates something for the user, such as what tool they are
- Share an exciting work story in a way that gives it a hook, such as “here’s how my first day on the job as a carpenter went.”
- Share yourself performing something difficult in your niche or performing something common but in a unique way
- Share yourself creating a project you can’t quite get right. Other users may be inspired to recreate the video and doing it to the best of their own ability
- Share anything, but again, make sure it has a hook, such as “what’s a tool in your tool bag you can’t live without? I’ll go first.”
The most effective way to start a trend is to challenge users or ask them to answer a question.
Some will simply answer in your comment section, but others will be inspired to film their own versions.
Final thoughts
Jumping on an existing social media trend is one of the easiest to get more eyeballs on your content.
These videos will do better than the usual styles of videos you create in most cases.
Starting your own trend, though? That’ll move the needle far more than anything else.
But it is a lot harder to get right.
Just remember that there are no guarantees that you’ll be able to start a trend. However, the advice I shared above will increase your chances substantially.
