As a brand, it is essential to be aware of context. When posting on social media, identifying trending topics helps you surface talking points to anchor your communications in a relevant way, as well as show some restraint in specific circumstances to avoid sounding tone-deaf.

In this guide, you’ll discover 13 ways to stay up-to-date on trending topics, so your content is always fresh.

1. Explore Instagram: Every month, more than half of the Instagram community uses the Explore tab to discover new photos, videos and stories. Surprisingly, everyone sees a unique selection of content from billions of options based on their preferences. Behind the scenes “runs a highly efficient 3-part classification funnel-based AI system that mines 65 billion features and makes 90 million model predictions every second.”

The 3-part ranking system narrows the selection from 500 applicants to the 25 you see in your individual Explore tab:

Step one: Choose the 150 best quality and most relevant candidates out of 500.
Second step: choose the 50 most qualitative and most relevant candidates.
Final Pass: selects the 25 most qualitative and relevant candidates (for the first page of the Explore grid).

So when you browse the Explore tab, you’re sure to see highly relevant and trending content about your brand.

2. Twitter Trends: There are two ways to spot trends on Twitter. Twitter trends are calculated based on the number of people discussing a topic in their tweets, based on geographic location and relevance to a user.

For example, a topic that goes around the world may not appear to a user who has no interest in that topic. Likewise, a topic that is only relevant in San Diego may not be presented to a global audience.

Note: Marketers can also purchase sponsored ads for relevant trends.

Twitter trending topic what’s going on:
~ Selecting a topic will take you to a page of related tweets to share with your audience.

Loomly Tip: You can generate Twitter trending post ideas based on your selected placement:

Trending Topics Twitter Trending Loomly: Moments are curated stories that showcase the best of what’s happening on Twitter. They’re personalized to show you trending topics that are popular or relevant to you, so you can see what’s trending on Twitter right now.

Trending Topics Twitter Moments: Moments are categorized by trending, news, sports, entertainment, entertainment and more. You can click on a moment to explore the story further and click the share icon to tweet the moment or copy the link.

3. LinkedIn Posts: LinkedIn News brings you the latest business news and stories. The editorial team creates, curates and cultivates content across posts, articles, trending news, LinkedIn lists, Daily Rundown and more. For example, if you subscribe to the Daily Rundown, you’ll receive a notification every morning redirecting you to the curated list of top titles:

Trending Topics LinkedIn news: You can also see the day’s top professional news and conversations at the top right of your LinkedIn homepage

Trending Top Stories Pro: You can click the drop-down arrow to expand the list of trending stories handpicked by LinkedIn editors. When you click on a story, you have the usual options to like, comment, or share with your network.

4. Trending on YouTube: YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, making it an incredible resource for finding trending content. The video platform offers a trending feed that includes subcategories like music, games, and news to help you narrow down your choices.

5. Reddit: Reddit – also known as “the front page of the internet” – is another site full of trending stories. Reddit discussions take place in communities – called subreddits – that exist for just about any topic people want to discuss. Subreddits start with “/r/” followed by the name of the forum. For example, you can search the popular subreddit (/r/popular) for a roundup of the latest trends and popular stories from various forums.

Trending Topics Reddit Popular Subreddit: Reddit threads are ranked using an up-and-down voting system to determine the most popular content.

6. Quora: Quora is an online question-and-answer forum where users can post and answer questions on a variety of topics. As with Reddit, answers are upvoted for and against, so whoever gets the most votes sits directly under the question.

Topics are grouped into sections. If you follow a topic or section, the questions and answers associated with that topic will appear in your feed.
Trending topics quora: Similarly, you can also follow people and see the questions and answers posted by them in your feed.

Then your main feed displays the newest and most popular questions and answers based on your selections.

7. Facebook for the Media: Facebook for Media is only open to journalists who can provide a press pass.

Facebook trending topics for Media: Trending topics, hashtags, conversations and users are displayed in the dashboard. Using hashtag popularity over time, you can track popular stories that may be relevant to you. Facebook for Media not only integrates with Instagram search, but also builds quick rankings, curates content, and provides data.

8. Popular hashtags: Hashtags are mostly used on Twitter and Instagram, as well as other social platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube. They are included in or immediately after the main written text to indicate the topic.

Using a hashtag is an easy way to quickly add context to your content, especially on Twitter where space for characters is limited. Trending hashtags are usually fast, short-lived, and a bit unpredictable. You should follow trends as they happen, and you should also research the hashtag before jumping into the conversation to make sure it’s relevant to your brand.

Trending hashtags are found on all social media platforms and can attract insane amounts of followers. On the plus side, they are a great way to showcase your product, service, brand, or content to a large audience. On the other hand, if a particular hashtag goes viral, your posts could get lost in a mass of content.

Loomly Tip: In Post Builder, Hashtag Suggestions recommends relevant hashtags for your post copy as well as trending hashtags so you can add them to your post with just one click: Trending Topics Trending Hashtag Suggestions.

9. Google Trends: Google Trends offers a much broader picture of trends because it’s based on search data and not a social network. You can enter your search topic and filter it by location, time, category and more.

You also have the option to compare it to another theme to see which is more popular:
Trending Topics Google Trends~ If you scroll down the page, you can see the latest search trends.
Trending Topics Google Trends Latest Searches~  You can also view real-time search trends over the past 24 hours.
Trending Topics Google Trends Real-Time Search~ Additionally, you can set up Google Alerts for any keywords you want to monitor and receive daily email alerts.

10. Feedly: You can keep up with trending content in one place by using Feedly to find the best sources for any topic.

Find and arrange all of your reliable sources –
~ You can add 11 different sources, including Twitter feeds and subreddits.
~ Teach Leo to filter out the noise by asking him to read your feeds and give priority to the topics, events, and trends that are important to you.
~ Leo is an AI research assistant.
~ Inform your audience of key industry insights by organizing, gathering, and disseminating them as a group.
trending topics Feedly.

11. Flipboard: Flipboard is a content aggregator that gathers articles and news from the web and sends them to Smart Magazines that are customized to your interests. You can discover and share excellent content on more than 28,000 topics using Flipboard’s content recommendation engine. To see and share what’s popular right now, for instance, you can subscribe to Trends magazine. Flipboard is for trending topics.

12. BuzzSumo: Through the analysis of hundreds of millions of pieces of content, BuzzSumo offers insight into the type of content that is successful for any topic or rival. Metrics like social shares, backlinks, and the influencers who share a specific piece of content are all visible.

The Top Stories feature displays the most popular articles from the previous hour, arranged by topic and trending score:

Buzzsumo for trends: Additionally, to find trends, you can conduct a topic-specific search and then filter the results by location and time (the previous 1, 3, 6, or 24 hours). Buzzsumo trends for trending topics.

13. BuzzFeed: BuzzFeed informs you of what’s going on in the popular culture. Even though not all stories will be pertinent, you can browse content in sections like News, Shopping, Videos, Animals, and more.

The most popular articles are shown in the trending section.

Conclusion: In a Nutshell~ Trending Topics.
Your social media posts will remain relevant if you find and share trending topics. You can find relevant trending topics for your brand regardless of whether you use a social network, a platform for user-generated content, or an app that curates news feeds.