Trending in marketing is a term that is often misunderstood. The word trending relates to the verb trend and the noun trend which mean a general feeling of direction or common course. When you hear someone talk about trending, they are talking about the current state of the marketing trends. Trending in marketing is simply a general indication of the changes taking place in the world of marketing and business.
Let’s take a look at one of the trends that I have noticed in many town halls across the country. At a recent town hall, the question was posed as to whether or not the candidate for mayor should be on the same ticket as the Green Party candidate. The moderator started the town hall meeting by asking each candidate to stand up and talk about why they were there and then gave the candidates one minute to talk about how they could help the people of this town. The moderator then brought out a piece of paper and asked each candidate to sign their name to their name and stated that this would now be their official campaign literature. Of course the candidates all signed except for the one who refused to sign on the paper saying that they did not want to be placed on the same platform as the Green Party candidate.
As you can see from the above example, the concept of trending is somewhat confusing. The word “trend” is used so much in our conversations that it has lost its meaning. In fact, the definition on the dictionary website for the word refers to a period of time that seems to last for a long time (e.g., “a trend may last for many months”). Therefore, to the moderator the candidates were in a “trending” discussion and no longer had to explain why they were there or why they were running for mayor. This is unfortunate because the concept of trending is very important in determining what the public wants to read about, how the public will read it, and thus, how much the public will read about it.
To illustrate how important the trending topic is, imagine if you will, a news story about a new product released by X Company. In its first day of being published on the internet, the news stories simply listed the X Company’s product and where it could be purchased. But, if those people searching for more information about the product did not know that X Company made only one product, they might not be looking for it in the first place. Therefore, the timing of the trending segment on the channel was very important and it was most definitely a factor in the amount of traffic and conversation that the article generated.
The problem with trending topics is that not every company, organization, or person is interested in them. A small business owner may only be interested in the current trends that are generated by search engines. Therefore, the trending topics for that business are not likely to be what a large company or government agency is interested in discussing. Also, the trending topics for small businesses are not likely to include many brands or products. For example, if the trending topics were for chocolate, many small businesses would be unable to market their business online because there just wasn’t enough of a demand for chocolate. Even though a chocolate company may find some success under these circumstances, they wouldn’t likely be able to sustain a long-term trend of eating chocolate all the time.
Trending topics are very important for the overall health of the internet. Online business owners and individuals need to understand how important this aspect of search engine optimization is. Because the trending topics are what bring the traffic to websites, search engines need to make sure that the most popular topics are always included when a person searches for specific information. By making sure that these are always the case, search engines can insure that the amount of traffic they receive each day is at its peak.