Starting a trend can feel impossible. Especially when you’re one lone creator, looking at the rest of the internet and wondering where to start. This guide is here to help you create your own trend or online movement. We’ll cover what you need to prep, what you need for your videos, and more!
Is This Just for Trends?
No, actually! While we’ll be focusing on trends in this article, this guide applies for digital events and online movements as well. We’ll use these words a little interchangeably, but they’re pretty different.
A trend is a popular or recurring behavior, interest, or activity that gains widespread attention and influence.
An in-app social media event is a temporary activity hosted within a social media platform. Think Clapper campaigns!
An online movement is a collective effort or campaign to promote a specific cause, raise awareness about an issue, or mobilize support for change.
As a creator, you have the power to start any one of these events! All you need are the right tools and the right preparation. Without further ado, let’s get into it.
Ask Yourself…
What?
What do you want to do, what do you want your event to entail, and what do you hope to accomplish? For a musician, this might look like wanting your songs to get more streams, so you create a funny trend or skit that utilizes it. You may want to raise awareness about a political situation, so you start sharing people’s stories. Whatever your motivation, have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish from the beginning.
Why?
Why do you want to accomplish that specific thing? The musician may want their music to get more streams so they can get more attention, start making money, or have their career take off. The person creating about a political situation would want to raise awareness and get more people talking about (potentially fighting against) what’s happening. Know why this trend or movement is important is key to keeping yourself motivated.
Who?
Who is your trend for? Is it something anyone can get involved in, or are you targeting a specific audience? Going back to the musician example, they’ll want to target the audience in their niche. A young artist who writes more angsty music would want to create a trend to target a young audience or people who may want to create similar content. An author wanting to start a trend would want to target it to bookish creators.
When?
How long is the trend or event going to last? When is it going to start? It’s generally a good idea to know the launch date, at least for your peace of mind. Depending on the trend, this is going to be super important. We’ll get into that later.
How?
This will be the finer details, like how you’re doing it and how people can get involved. Think of it like logistics. What’s the specific video or trend? For the musical example, creators would just use the same sound to be involved. For the political statement example, you may want creators to repost a video, use a song or hashtag, or find a story to share with their audience. This is one of the most important elements and will be the main thing you want to share with participants.
Once you’ve asked yourself these five questions, you can start building your trend. There’s a couple things you’ll need.
Your Trend Kit
Name your trend. Call it something fun and memorable that summarizes it well. If you won’t share the name with anyone, it can be something simple for you.
Clear CTA. Make sure you have a clear and consistent call to action for your videos. What do watchers need to do to get involved?
Story and messaging. This will be your what and why all rolled into one. Think of something your audience will relate to or be interested in.
These preparations will make up the foundation of your trend. It’s the base everything will come from, but we do recommend doing some additional work once your trend is launched. The more you do, the more likely it is that your trend will be successful or take off. Below are the additional elements you should consider so your trend and event have the maximum impact.
Know the Trends
This begins before you start working on your trend at all, ideally in the idea phase. Be aware of what’s already going on in your niche. Keep an eye on what trends are currently taking over and see how your trend could fit in. See if you can figure out what makes them do so well and replicate it for yourself.
If you want to be really strategic and ahead of the curve, try looking for trends that are rising or about to happen. Musicians may know there’ll be an uptick in streams or attention leading up to summer, so they may start a trend in April or May. You can follow newsletters or experts in your niche to get an idea of what’s coming.
Think Outside the Box
Look for untapped potential. See if there are any gaps in your niche that you could fill in. Is there something people aren’t talking about? A lot of trends begin this way, so don’t be afraid to brainstorm some new ideas, video formats, or styles.
Also, check out other niches and see if there’s another trend you can use. The musician might see something from the bookish community that would fit their niche perfectly! You aren’t limited to the trends in your community, so expand your inspo search. You may even find something while you’re scrolling your FYP!
Find Someone to Help
Reach out to other creators in your niche and see if they’d like to be part of the trend! Do you have any mutuals that you’d like to work with? Are there some creators you follow that you’d love to work with? Message them and see if they’d be interested. You can also post a video telling your audience you’re working on a project and want some help. You may find some of your followers are excited to help out and have a different audience you can connect with. Having another creator onboard makes planning your trend and spreading the word easier. You’ll reach multiple audiences and push it out further.
Make it Shareable
The key to trends is making them easy to share. You want to create videos that viewers want to send to each other. That means making a video that’s high-quality and educational, hilarious, or quick. Shareable content is also very easy to understand and follow along with. It’s something that’s so good you want to share it with your friends. Obviously, this will help your trend spread faster and bring even more people into the fold.
Creating shareable content isn’t as easy as using a template or asking someone to share the content. It’s a skill and strategy that can take some time to approach. You can learn more about the ins and outs of creating shareable content in this article.
Choosing Your Hashtags
The first piece to any trend is hashtags. You’ve got to give your trend a solid hashtag that people can use to spread the word. It should be something eye-catching and easy to remember that clearly states what your trend is. If your trend has a name, go with that! Try to have at least one tag that unifies every video.
Also, spend some time optimizing the rest of the hashtags in your video. Don’t just choose random ones: you want to use hashtags that will help you find the right audience. The musician trying to get attention on their song would use hashtags like #newmusic or #musiclovers, or they might target an audience they think would resonate with the song. Angsty music meant for a younger demographic could use #angst or #OliviaRodrigo. Obviously, there will be better options, depending on the actual trend, but you get the picture!
You can learn more about optimizing hashtags in this article!
A Note on Hashtags
Some trends will not need their own specific hashtag, which is fine. It all depends on your trend and what you’re asking people to do. As you’re thinking about your how, consider if a hashtag is necessary.
Research the Algorithm
At the end of the day, all of your content is fighting against an algorithm. To make sure it spreads far, you and your collaborators will have to strategically think about your content and how it works into the algorithm. Or, as Clapper OG @JDubsArts says, how to make the tastiest sandwich for the algorithm.
What does the algorithm like? Is there content of yours it enjoys the most? What elements can you add to make it more enticing or exciting? Is there a trending audio or hashtag you can include to push it out?
You should also consider what you can do outside of posting your trends to get the algorithm to push it out. For example: Clapper has an equal opportunity algorithm, but the top-performing creators are the ones who spend time building a community and engaging with other creators. On other platforms, you might notice an uptick in attention on your trend video when you continue creating your regular content.
Be Consistent
You want to maintain consistency in your posting schedule to keep the momentum going. Create a schedule for how often you’ll post and stick to it. For a trend, we’d recommend every day. This will increase your chances of being seen, and algorithms that favor consistent posting will be more likely to push your content, too.
Also, be consistent when it comes to the messaging about your trend. What is it for? How can people be involved? What are the collaborators sharing or not sharing with the wider public? You’ll want to be on the same page about everything to minimize potential confusion. And so everyone spreading the word is giving out the same information!
Optional: Promote!
Depending on what kind of trend or event you’re doing, you’ll want to promote it a little bit. If you want it to look organic or less strategic, you don’t have to worry about this piece. But if you’re hosting an event, a movement, or want to start a community trend, you’ll need to develop a bit of a promotion strategy.
For example, the political awareness movement were mentioned up top would need to do some promotion before the official event started. That means creating videos announcing what they’re doing and encouraging people to get involved. You’d want to post several times about your event before it begins. We start promoting our in-app events about one or two weeks before they start, by sending out messages, posting several videos, and even sending out emails. Do some research into promoting events and find a strategy that will work best for you.
Get inspired by our in-app events by reading up on our campaigns! To start your trend off on the right foot, check out our Ultimate Creator Guide. Give your profile an audit to set yourself up for success, or read up on strategic thinking and social media.