Why Social Media Trends Don’t Always Work for Companies

Having success on social media can be a difficult concept to grasp. Most people understand the importance of maintaining a social media presence, but misunderstand the actual value behind social media metrics and benchmarks. Likes and views are often thought of as the primary criteria for judging the success of a marketing campaign, but are often just vanity metrics. It’s more important to translate your content from views to actual business.

Organic vs Artificial Engagement

Focusing on trends can absolutely lead to an increase in traffic to your social media page, but oftentimes the response is short lived and doesn’t work to retain followers. The users viewing and liking and even sharing your post, might not come back or click through to your main page or your website.

Building an organic following, by targeting your ideal audience and creating content that engages that audience, will serve your business needs much more effectively in the long run.

Pitfalls of Relying on Trends

The lifecycle of a trend is often incredibly short. Their novelty is what makes them successful, and if you can’t find a unique angle for your market, you run the risk of appearing out of touch,  bandwagoning, or oversaturating the market.

In order to have success with trends, you have to constantly have your ear to the pulse on social media and quickly create quality, engaging content. This is sometimes hard for people in the marketing industry, let alone someone who is also running a business. Focus on building your brand.

For different businesses, not all content is created equal. Your brand identity should inform everything you post and share on social media, and some trends just aren’t going to land with your audience. Consider the type of online personality you want to cultivate, before just going after the latest trend.

Virality is Bad for your Brand

The obvious problem with relying on going viral as a social media strategy is the difficulty. Capturing the attention of a mass audience requires incredibly engaging content or extreme controversy, and even if you get it perfect, it still might not take off. Following trends and hoping for the best is more likely to leave you frustrated and waste valuable time.

Content creators who have had success with trends have also noted that after the initial wave of increased follower count and engagement, they actually later saw an overall decrease in both metrics. If you already have a following in your market niche, you may turn off your focus audience by creating content outside of their interest. And, if you can’t keep building on your viral post, your new followers will quickly abandon your account for something fresh.

What Should You Do Instead?

Figure out who your target audience is and focus on building or expanding based on what they need. Turning views into sales requires that those viewing the content actually want your product or service. If you do decide to go trend chasing, try to focus on trends that fit into your audience’s interests.

By avoiding the generality of viral content, you can really hone in on creating consistently great, focused content that has an impact and cements you as a premier brand in your niche. The goal is to encourage user stickiness. You want your audience to keep engaging with your social media accounts and feel like they have a reason to return again and again.