Twitter Trending Topics: How to Use What's Trending on Twitter to Grow Your Business

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When younger adults hear the word “trending,” they immediately think of the Twitter platform. And truthfully, if you want to know what’s trending today across the world or your city, this channel is a great source. Twitter trending topics can be anything from gossip to national current events. The social media network boasts over 330 million active users, and for businesses using the Twitter platform, this means a host of potential new leads. In this post, the social media marketing experts at Kiopi will explain how you can use Twitter trending topics to grow your brand efficiently and effectively. We’ll also show how a social media scheduler and content calendar can help your business improve your social media marketing efforts.

What are Twitter Trending Topics?

Let’s start with the basics. Twitter trending topics are simply what is popular amongst the social media channel’s users. Twitter’s algorithm uses several variables to determine what is currently trending. A few of these variables include the number of mentions and total engagement stemming from the most common hashtags, topics, and keywords. So, when a Twitter user starts following a specific topic, the social media platform will automatically show that user more trends, tweets, and news related to the topic on that user’s Twitter homepage. Essentially this just means that the Twitter platform will show you what it believes you are the most interested in using your previous interactions on its network. This helps to show you interesting information that is trending locally as well as around the world. Twitter’s algorithm is known for cranking out Twitter trending topics across the globe. The algorithm finds what the general population is interested in and talking about. Then, it shares the information so that more of its accounts can take part in the conversation.

How are Twitter Trends Decided?

twitter trends

Like other social platforms, Twitter has an algorithm to help present the best information to each user. This algorithm essentially takes the topics with more engagement than other topics and shares them with users who may be interested in the specific trending topic.

The longer a user is on the Twitter platform, the more the algorithm will understand the user’s search patterns.

Twitter’s algorithm groups Twitter trends and hashtags together if they’re closely related, and in general, a trending topic will have over 10k tweets.

How Do You Find Twitter Trends?

Ok, so now that you understand what Twitter trends are and where they come from, let’s go over where you find what’s trending on Twitter.

First, you can find Twitter trending topics on your homepage by selecting the “Explore” tab.

twitter trends for business
From here, you can browse through trending posts that Twitter’s algorithm believes you will enjoy. You can also select the “Trending” section to view the most recent trending hashtags and topics. Additionally, when you first open your Twitter homepage, you’ll see a section on the right hand side of the homepage that says, “What’s Happening“.
twitters trending topics

This section includes the trending or most popular topics on Twitter, along with real-time shares and comments. It also provides additional headlines and stories connected with the trends so that you can have some context while reading.

You can also find the most popular tweets and hashtags on Twitter by selecting the “More” section on the left-hand sidebar.

twitter trends help

Here, you can select from “Followed” or “Suggested“.

All of the topics that you follow are used by Twitter’s algorithm to personalize the tweets, events, and ads that you see here.

Additionally, you can select the “Suggested” section to explore trending tweets in specific categories. When you select a specific category, you’ll see a drop-down menu with a more niche list of trending topics related to that specific category or industry.

How to Find Trending Hashtags on Twitter

Many business owners already understand how much leveraging Twitter hashtags and trending tweets can help grow brand awareness. This is easy in theory, but the difficulty, for most, is finding the right hashtags to use.

If you’re looking for trending hashtags to use for your business posts, you can go about this in a few different ways:

Manually Search for Trending Hashtags on Twitter

One way to find trending hashtags for your business is to scroll through the various trending topics and hashtags to determine which one you’ll use for your tweet or post.

The drawback here is that searching through unfiltered data can take some time.

Search Hashtags by Location

If you’re a locally owned business, you can search for trending hashtags in a specific location. You will just need to change your geographical preferences for trending topics and hashtags in the trends section of your settings. There are also tools, such as Trends 24, that can give you location-specific trending hashtag information.

Use Mobile Apps to Track Trending Hashtags

Many mobile apps out there let you find popular hashtags. Most of these apps rely on the same features.

The three most popular mobile apps dedicated to Twitter trends include:

  • Trending on Twitter
  • Trending Hashtags on Twitter
  • Trending on Twitter in USA

It’s important to note that all of these Twitter monitoring apps use the same or similar data as the Twitter Trends feature on the Twitter platform. All these apps do is present the data differently.

We find it best to use apps that aren’t dedicated to Twitter. Apps such as Tags or Tagify seem to work better. These apps allow you to discover hashtags by category, or they’ll generate the most popular hashtags while you type the keywords.

How Businesses Can Use Twitter Trends for Growth

Now that we’ve covered where to find Twitter trends, now let’s go over how you can use this information to help market your brand and connect with your target audience.

Here are a few tips that your company can use to incorporate Twitter trends into your overall marketing strategy:

Understand Sentiment Associated With a Trend

One of the perks of trending tweets or hashtags is the ability to see in real-time what people are saying about a particular issue or topic. This helps you, as a business owner, see exactly how people feel about an idea and how Twitter users respond to those specific phrases.

So, if you’re looking to analyze your brand, a competitor’s brand, one of your new products, or even a product that’s similar to yours, research on Twitter can be extremely helpful.

How?

If you really want to understand your audience, you don’t just need to see how many people are discussing a product or service. You also need to see exactly how consumers feel about it.

Are the discussions positive or negative? Are there areas in which you need to improve? Are your competitors missing the ball and leaving your business an opportunity to take their market share?

A quick scroll through related tweets can better understand how consumers feel about the subject.

Use Trending Hashtags to Be Included in the Conversation

A few years ago, a ton of businesses used this tactic to jump on board every bandwagon there was in order to gain exposure on popular social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram.

Don’t do this.

Instead, wait until you find an interesting topic related to your brand. You won’t have to wait very long. You can find ways to make trending subjects related to your business.

When using this tactic, you’ll want to make sure that you sound natural and relaxed when you’re tweeting. Don’t try to force anything.

Use a Social Media Calendar Based on Trending Topics

social media content calendar
Popular tweets can give you an overall sense of what is happening in the world in real-time. As a business owner, you can use this information as a resource to forecast trends and create valuable content using a social media content calendar from KIOPI. Once you’ve started using popular interests and hashtags to schedule your social media content, you’ll see that after a while, certain trends on the internet are fairly predictable, especially if you’re looking at interest on a local level.

Use Trending Topics for Specific Days or Events

Regardless of what is happening in the world, hashtags, such as #mondaymotivation, #wednesdaywisdom, #tbt (throwback Thursday), #fridayfeeling, and #sundayfunday will trend on their respective days every single week.

Use KIOPI’s calendar and social media scheduler to map out tweets and posts for those days.
social media scheduling
Furthermore, you can use this same concept to schedule your holiday posts on your social media channels. Twitter only allows a hashtag to trend a day or two, max. Trending hashtags that continue longer than this aren’t included in the factors that spike traffic. Instead, they’re a baseline for upcoming trending topics. In any case, just because you don’t see a hashtag or topic still trending doesn’t mean that it isn’t still relevant and popular amongst social media users.

Schedule Trending Content Across Multiple Social Media Platforms

With KIOPI, you can schedule content to be posted across a single social media platform or across multiple platforms: Try looking at tweet scheduler free.

Grow Your Business Using Trending Topics and KIOPI

Over the past several years, we’ve all seen just how powerful Twitter trending topics and Twitter trending hashtags can be. These popular tweets can help you make important decisions, as they provide a unique insight into the minds of consumers. With access to these trends in real-time, your brand can gain insight into your target audience’s behaviors, preferences, and factors that determine whether or not a product or brand is successful. With the help of KIOPI’s social media content scheduler tool and content calendar, you can implement the trending topic strategy into your social media marketing strategy seamlessly. Want to know more about Kiopi? Ready to get started? We have a 14-day free trial, so you have nothing to lose!
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