3 Ways To Know If You Should Pursue Trending Stories
Content marketing works in weird ways. Actually super weird ways. And of the craziest elements of content marketing is keeping up with the trends. You are sleeping peacefully, with your lights and phones off, but sadly Will Smith loses his cool and suddenly decides to spank Chris Rock. And bam…
All you are left with is just an order from your content head to create memes using it or leverage it as soon as possible. But then the real question is: do you really need to go with that trend? Is it relevant? Will your niche audience like it?
Before diving headlong into creating memes and spending every inch of your energy on getting traction, try to solve these three simple questions:
- How much time do you need to create content out of it?
Research says that the average shelf life of a trend is hardly 10 months, whereas you would need just enough time: plan your content, prepare your content, promote it on all social media platforms and then repurpose it to get enough traction. While you fill in all of these checklists, there remains a thin chance that you miss this benchmark. Naturally who would like to come across a meme in their feed for some 10299th time! You would need to create a real-world content calendar and roster to see exactly how much would you need to make your version of the trend go viral.
- Are you adding any secret sauce to the trend?
Or is it just some ordinary sandwich with some veggies and cheese in it? Your audience might do without one meme less with a trend but definitely won’t stand a bland and boring repetitive graphic of Will slapping Chris. While you chalk out your content strategy, make sure you are dishing out a fresh and original piece of the trends. Be well versed with what already exists on the platform and then design your own.
- Can you make that eternal and immortal?
Serving just any content with the trend isn’t enough. The magic lies in how you are leveraging it. Is it just some ordinary one-liner? Can people relate to what you are trying to express? For instance, if you are picking some movie scenes or dialogues, you would need to think:
- How will relate that trend to your product?
- When you make it relatable for your product, how will you make it sound relevant to your audience?
- How will make these above elements fit together to make it everlasting?
- Whatever you are coming up with, is it the main idea or subset of a bigger idea?
The Indian Idiots Instagram page is the best example of how to curate the best out of trends and how to set your own trends.
Tackling trends is sort of a gamble. It can make or break your content marketing. You can either make a home in your audience’s heart and remain there forever or ruin the moment for everyone. Be sure with what you do.
What other trouble spots content marketers should care about while diving deeper into trends? Mention in the comments.
