Predicting Tomorrow's Trends

What do Donald Trump, chicken nuggets, and South Korean boy band BTS have in common?

The answer is that in 2017, they were among the most popular trends on Twitter.

Social media can be fickle. No one could have predicted that Carter Wilkerson’s appeal for free chicken nuggets (below) would become the most retweeted tweet of 2017. There are, though, some trends that we can predict and use to our advantage when we’re planning our social media strategy.

The key to social media is being organised. Yes, there are the unpredictable stories like Carter’s nugget quest, but there are a huge number of trends that you can predict and take advantage of to encourage engagement with your social media activity.

Remember we talked about hashtags (in this blog)? When you log into Twitter, you’ll see the day’s trending topics in the panel on the left-hand side. Now, these are all well and good for reacting to trends on social media, but what if you want to know what tomorrow’s trends will be? You’d have to be Nostradamus, right? Wrong. Take September for instance. We know that #MigraineWeek will be trending between the third and the ninth. We know that #BuyABookDay will be trending on the seventh. And we know that the top trends for the thirteenth will include #RoaldDahlDay and #CeliacAwarenessDay. And we don’t need any superpowers to know this. All it takes is a little research and a bit of planning.

But what does this mean when you’re using social media to tie in with your use of Care Opinion? Well, it means that if, for instance, you’re planning on sharing a story on Organ Donation, your best chance of increasing your story’s reach is to tweet it during Organ Donation Week (3rd – 9th September) and tagging it with the appropriate hashtag. Are you planning on asking people for stories relating to blood pressure? Well, maybe you could consider tweeting it during Know Your Numbers week (a national campaign with the aim of increasing people’s awareness of their blood pressure ‘numbers’).

As you can no doubt imagine, there are literally hundreds of awareness ‘days,’ ‘weeks,’ and ‘months’ throughout the year (September alone includes National Eye Week, Sexual Health Week, Jeans for Genes Day, Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Urology Awareness Month, and Vascular Disease Awareness Month), and they won’t all be relevant to your organisation. Some, however, will be. Some, while not relevant, will be a lot of fun. You’ve probably heard of #StarWarsDay (May the fourth) – why not use an event like that to bring your team in on the fun? Getting your team involved is a great way to drive up those social media hits.

A little bit of organisation, some imagination and research, and a pinch of social media savvy, and you’ll have boatloads of opportunities to share stories and encourage others to do the same. And if it works for you, we’d love to hear about it through Twitter or Facebook. And here’s something to get you thinking. September 19th is #TalkLikeAPirateDay – we’ll be watching to see who among you is brave enough to walk the plank and get involved. Arrr!