4 Social Media Trends that are Irrelevant for Your Brand

Today, it’s tough for brand social media managers to keep track of where and how they should be engaging customers on social media. Trends change with the drop of a hat. I won’t tell you what the next big thing is, but I will tell you what isn’t.

#InsertGenericHolidayHere

It’s #WaffleDay or #FlipFlopsDay or #PoppyseedMuffinDay and it’s trending. You may think including these “holidays” in your content calendars are an easy way to make your brand feel relatable by participating in the conversation of the day. However, this tactic is very tired and is more likely to get groans from your audience than applause. Unless the hashtag is uniquely related to your brand (think #NationalCheeseburgerDay for McDonald’s) you can just skip this approach altogether.

Brands Using Bae

It’s easy to see with just a quick check of Twitter that slang use is a huge part of social media culture for consumers at large. Bad news: Sprout Social recently reported that slang use by brands is a top pet peeve of those same consumers. It can be tempting to experiment with your brand voice and speak like your customers, in an effort to seem more authentic. However, the opposite effect occurs. Brands are coming off as try-hard as they attempt to use words like bae, on fleek, lit, basic, GOAT, etc. While these words may be common for your audience, the reality is your brand isn’t a person, so using slang to color the brand’s experience stands out in a bad way.

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You Won’t BELIEVE What Comes Next

Spoiler alert, it’s clickbaiting. Tons of content is created daily with exaggerated, often ridiculous copy & headlines. Getting that click is becoming harder and harder as more content fills timelines and creates competition. We get it. Writing copy for endless posts makes it easy to want to give in to those hyperbolic headlines (10 New Products That’ll Blow Your Mind, 5 Trends That Will SHOCK you). There is one really good reason to avoid this. Facebook is now cracking down on clickbait publishers. While their plan to ding the traffic for these publishers should really only affect true spammers, the anti-clickbait algorithm represents Facebook’s overall outlook on the type of content they do and don’t want created. If clickbait is in the “don’t” column, then brands would be smart to avoid it.

Ask Me Anythings (AMAs)

Today, AMAs are popular on several channels, most notably Twitter & Reddit. They seem like a great idea at first – open up your brand to your true fans to ask the questions they’ve always wanted to know the answers to, receive engagements and affinity for being “real”. It sounds good on paper. The huge, hopefully semi-obvious downside for brands is that these AMAs can take a turn for the worse very easily. Brands and celebrities that seem innocuous enough have had PR nightmares from giving this trend a try. Even if trolling is ignored, true questions from fans that the brand isn’t ready for can make the brand look unprepared at best. The potentiality for error here makes it a good trend to avoid.

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There you have it; 4 trends that you officially have permission to ignore as a social media manager. You’re welcome!

If you want information on how to handle those trends that you do want to try out, reach out to our team. We promise our content is lit.



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