A Sales & Marketing Expert‘s Guide to Discovering and Leveraging Trending Content in 2024

As a sales and marketing leader, you know that one of the keys to engaging your audience is delivering relevant, timely content that taps into the topics they‘re most interested in. But with the breakneck speed of online conversations, identifying those trending topics can feel like trying to take a sip from a fire hose.

Consider this: a recent survey by Semrush found that 40% of marketers say finding relevant trends is their biggest challenge when it comes to content ideation. And yet, hopping on the right trend at the right time can make all the difference – on average, tying your brand to trending stories can boost social shares by 15-30% and drive 2-5X more traffic.

So how can you cut through the noise to surface the trends that really matter for your business? And once you‘ve found them, how do you effectively integrate them into your content and PR strategies? In this guide, I‘ll walk you through a proven process for trend discovery and activation, with a special focus on two of the leading tools in the space: BuzzSumo and EpicBeat.

Finding the Signal in the Noise: How BuzzSumo & EpicBeat Discover Trending Content

When it comes to trend detection, BuzzSumo and EpicBeat are two of the most powerful platforms on the market. While they share the same core goal of helping you find popular and trending content, they each have slightly different approaches and capabilities. Let‘s take a look under the hood.

BuzzSumo‘s Content Analyzer

BuzzSumo is a comprehensive content research tool that analyzes millions of data points across social networks and the web to identify top-performing stories and influencers. Its Content Analyzer feature allows you to enter any keyword or domain and instantly see the most shared articles on that topic across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and other platforms.

Some key things BuzzSumo looks at to determine trends include:

• Number of shares and engagements across each network
• Link popularity based on number of unique linking domains
• Publish date (to identify newly trending stories)
• Sentiment analysis (to gauge emotional resonance)
• Influencers and publications driving shares

One of the great things about BuzzSumo is the ability to filter results by content type (e.g. article, infographic, video), word count, language, and more. So if you wanted to find, say, the most popular infographics about "artificial intelligence" in the past month, you could do that with just a few clicks.

EpicBeat‘s Trending Now

EpicBeat takes a slightly different approach with its Trending Now feature – instead of just looking at cumulative shares, it focuses on content velocity and growth rates to identify breaking stories before they go viral.

When evaluating trends, EpicBeat considers factors like:

• Number of shares and engagements in a given timeframe
• Rate of growth in shares/engagements over time
• Content publication date
• Acceleration in popularity across multiple networks
• Keyword momentum and frequency across stories

EpicBeat will even estimate the "trendiness" of an article on a scale of 1-100, as well as predicting its staying power with an "Evergreen Score". This can help you quickly gauge whether something is just a momentary fad or likely to retain value over time.

Another neat thing about EpicBeat is that you can see detailed sharing data for individual articles, including a list of influencers who shared it:

Real-World Examples

To give you a sense of how these platforms work in practice, let‘s look at a couple examples of trending topics I found using BuzzSumo and EpicBeat.

Using BuzzSumo, I searched for popular content related to "virtual events", a topic that‘s exploded in relevance since the pandemic. Some of the top results included:

• A guide to hosting engaging virtual events from Markletic (3.2K shares)
• Virtual event statistics from Wild Apricot (2.3K shares)
• Virtual event best practices from Cvent (1.8K shares)

Looking at these results, a few things stand out as potential angles for my own content:

• Tactical how-to guides seem to perform well
• People are hungry for data/statistics
• Tying to the pandemic/"new normal" lends extra relevance

Over on EpicBeat, a search for "NFT" (non-fungible tokens) revealed some interesting trending stories:

• A beginner‘s guide to NFTs from The Verge (12.8K shares)
• An opinion piece on why NFTs are a dangerous trap from Wired (7.3K shares)
• A story on the most expensive NFT ever sold from Digg (4.2K shares)

Some insights and ideas this sparks:

• There‘s demand for explainer/introductory content
• Controversial/opinionated takes can drive shares
• Focusing on record-breaking sales taps into a sense of novelty

Using the intel from these tools, I have a solid starting point to brainstorm content ideas that will resonate with my audience‘s interests and tap into cultural moments.

Creating a Trending Content Calendar

Of course, trend-based content works best when you have a plan. Rather than just jumping on trends willy-nilly, it pays to proactively map out key dates, seasons, and events you want to align your content to.

Here‘s a basic framework I recommend to my clients:

1. Make a list of major holidays, seasonal events, and industry milestones relevant to your business. BuzzSumo‘s "Upcoming Events" feature or EpicBeat‘s "Events" calendar can be helpful for this.

2. For each event, brainstorm content ideas, formats, target audiences, and promotional channels. Aim for a mix of evergreen and timely content.

3. Work backwards from event dates to set deadlines for content creation and promotion, adding tasks to your project management tool of choice. Leave ample lead time for trendier content.

4. Keep an eye on your trend discovery tools in the lead up to events to spot rising conversations you may want to participate in. Build in some flexibility to adapt to breaking news.

5. After each event, review content performance and make notes on what worked well and what could be improved for next time.

Here‘s a simplified example of what this might look like:

Event	Content Ideas	Format	Channels	Publish Date
Earth Day	– Sustainable marketing tips	Blog post	– Website	April 10
	– Eco-friendly promo products	Instagram carousel	– Social media	April 20
INBOUND	– Key themes/track overview	Live blogs	– Website	Day of event
	– Speaker interviews	Video/podcast	– Partner sites	2 wks prior
	– Party highlights	IG/Twitter/TikTok	– Social media	Real-time
Black Friday	– Roundup of best deals	Blog post	– Website	Early Nov
	– Holiday gift guides by persona	Interactive quiz	– Email	Mid Nov
	– Promo sneak peeks	FB/IG Live	– Social media	Week of

The key is to start with the big rocks, then allow room for iteration and optimization as you dig into the data. Speaking of which…

Measuring the Impact of Trend-Based Content

It‘s one thing to ride the wave of a trend – it‘s another to translate that into meaningful business results. To gauge the effectiveness of your trend-based content, it‘s important to track the right metrics:

• Traffic: Look at overall pageviews the content received, as well as traffic from specific channels like organic search, social, email, etc. BuzzSumo can show referral traffic sources.

• Engagement: Review likes, shares, and comments on each piece. Check if key influencers amplified the content. Use EpicBeat to benchmark versus competitors.

• Leads & Sales: Track how many people converted on your content (e.g. fills out a lead gen form, starts a free trial, makes a purchase). Estimate value based on lifetime value.

• SEO: Monitor keyword rankings for the topic before and after publishing to see if you‘re capturing relevant search traffic. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help with this.

• Brand Lift: For larger campaigns, consider running brand lift studies to measure awareness, perception and affinity. Platforms like Google Surveys make this easy.

The exact mix of metrics you focus on will depend on your specific goals, but in general, I recommend choosing 2-3 priority KPIs that ladder up to business objectives.

For example, let‘s say EpicBeat alerted me to a spike in conversation around "cloud security" and I wrote a blog post on the topic. If 1000 people read the article, 50 of them subscribed to my newsletter, and 5 went on to become customers with an average deal size of $10,000, I could attribute $50,000 in pipeline to that single post. Not too shabby!

The Future of Trendspotting

As powerful as tools like BuzzSumo and EpicBeat are, the nature of online trends is always evolving – and the way we detect and act on them must evolve too. While no one can predict the future, there are a few key developments I believe will shape trend discovery in the coming years:

• Predictive Analytics: Expect to see more AI-powered tools that can identify trending topics before they even happen based on early signals. Social benchmarking platform Rival IQ is already experimenting with predictive analytics.

• Cross-Channel Insights: The rise of newer networks like TikTok shows how quickly online attention can shift. Tools will need to get better at tracking trends across an ever-expanding range of touchpoints, from messaging apps to voice interfaces.

• Real-World Integration: As online and offline experiences converge, trend analysis will increasingly factor in data from in-person activations, IoT devices, and other real-world sources to understand what‘s capturing consumer attention.

• Micro-Trend Detection: While major cultural moments like the Olympics will always be important, I believe we‘ll see a growing emphasis on identifying niche micro-trends within specific audience segments. Platforms like Pulsar are pioneering audience intelligence.

• Content Personalization: As trend data becomes more granular, we‘ll have the ability to dynamically personalize content and offers based on an individual‘s unique interests and context. Imagine your website auto-populating with trending content tailored to each visitor.

The common theme here is that trend spotting is becoming more holistic, data-driven, and automated. But at the same time, the human element of judgment and creativity in acting on those trends will be more important than ever.

Riding the Wave

We‘ve covered a lot of ground in this guide, but the key takeaways are simple: Timely, trend-driven content is one of the most powerful tools in any marketer‘s arsenal. Tools like BuzzSumo and EpicBeat make it easy to discover the most relevant trends for your audience. With a little planning and the right mix of formats, you can turn those insights into campaigns that drive meaningful business results.

But it‘s not just about chasing the latest fad – it‘s about understanding the deeper shifts in consumer attention and sentiment that those trends reflect. By staying ahead of the curve and adapting your content strategy accordingly, you can build a truly responsive, resilient brand that stands the test of time.

So keep exploring. Keep experimenting. And most importantly, keep listening to your audience to uncover the trends that matter most. Your content (and your bottom line) will thank you.

Now if you‘ll excuse me, I have to go update my NFT explainer article – I hear AI-generated art is the next big thing. 😉

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Special thanks to the teams at BuzzSumo and EpicBeat for providing insights and examples that informed this article.