Choosing Social Media Trends to Take Part In as a Brand

Every Friday afternoon, social media managers all over the world share the exact same feeling of mild panic. A new audio clip is blowing up on TikTok. A weird text joke is taking over Threads. A chaotic meme has completely flooded the Instagram feed. The immediate reaction is always expected. You want to jump on the trend and grab a quick bit of attention. It feels like everyone else is doing it, so you think your brand should too.

Social media teams love making trendy content. Honestly, sometimes we like it more than working on our main, everyday campaigns. It gives you a quick rush of dopamine when you see a timely post rack up fast likes and shares. But as strategists, we have to look past that instant hit.

For a long time, the common view was that brands should be careful about chasing every single internet craze. When every company on the web makes the exact same joke, the whole feed starts to look identical. If you can swap your corporate logo for a competitor’s and the post still makes total sense, you’ve really only contributed to the noise, rather than delivering any actual results.

At Kaizen, our approach is all about continuous improvement and being intentional with what we do. We believe everything your brand puts out should have a clear reason behind it. That doesn’t mean you should exclude trends from your content calendar completely. It just means you need a solid way to filter them. When a trend moves fast, people are already paying attention to it. They are actively scrolling, sending links to group chats and looking for funny takes. If you show up the right way, you can just ride that wave instead of trying to force a vibe out of nowhere.

So, the goal is to work out which internet moments are actually worth your brand’s time and which ones are just distractions. To do that, we look at trends through four simple tests.

1. Set up your internal workflow to move instantly

93% of consumers believe it’s important for brands to keep up with online culture; however, the lifespan of an internet trend is incredibly short.

27% of consumers think it’s only effective within 24-48 hours of a trend’s lifespan.

Source: Sprout Social

The moment people start complaining that a joke is getting old, any brand trying to join in looks completely out of touch.

33% of consumers think jumping on the latest trends is embarrassing.

Source: Sprout Social

Speed is your biggest asset. If a graphic designer, a copywriter and three different rounds of corporate approval are required just to put out one post, you will miss the window entirely. By the time your post is approved and scheduled, the internet has moved on to something else.

The trends worth jumping on are often low-effort, high-speed ideas. If an idea means pulling your creative team away from what they’re working on or messing up a whole afternoon of filming, it’s probably not worth it.

2. Just focus on being part of the community instead of chasing numbers

It is very easy to look at big view counts and massive like numbers and claim a post was a huge success. But experienced strategists always ask a deeper question: Who is actually clicking the heart button?

If your trend post goes viral among millions of teenagers who do not have the money or the desire to ever buy your expensive product, those numbers are just empty stats. High numbers feel great in a weekly report, but they rarely help the business grow where it matters.

Your goal should always be to create deep recognition. You want to make trend content where someone in your exact target audience looks at the post, shares it, and leaves a comment saying, “This is exactly my life.” When someone shares your content because it reflects who they are, they are publicly backing your brand. That kind of support is incredibly valuable. It builds real community and long-term loyalty. If the joke only appeals to other social media managers who like clever writing, it is just a creative exercise. Focus entirely on the people who actually buy what you sell.

3. Make sure your messaging ladders back to the brand purpose

This is where most corporate social media plans fall apart. A brand spots a massive trend, makes a quick version, and hits publish. The post gets thousands of likes. But if you look closely at the text, the joke is totally generic. It is a joke about hating Mondays, needing coffee, or a line from a movie that applies to every human being on earth.

Generic jokes mixed with a trending format result in content that people forget instantly. People simply remember the meme itself, completely forgetting which brand posted it.

At Kaizen, we believe your brand should only show up if you can own the trend. The takeaway needs to connect directly to your specific product, your unique voice, or a problem that only your customers understand.

Right after the news broke that the former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, now known as Pope Leo XIV,

was elected the first pope from the U.S., Popeyes posted two simple words, a play on its name, on X

If a competitor could copy your exact text, paste it onto their profile, and have it make perfect sense, do not post it. The value of contributing to social media trends comes from using that meme to show off who you are. Turn the trend into a tool for your message.

4. Target highly relevant, live conversations

The final test a trend has to pass is straightforward: Does this format actually put your brand into a live conversation that makes sense for your business?

When something goes viral online, it is usually a joke or setup that everyone gets. The average person scrolling through their feed understands the punchline before they even finish reading your text. As a result, makes them much more likely to stop and engage. However, the size of the crowd matters less than who is actually in it.

Trends usually come in two sizes. You have massive, mainstream trends that the whole internet sees, like 6-7, and you have small, focused ones, like the Grandmacore aesthetic among Gen Z, that reject sterile minimalism in favour of vintage textiles.

A lot of social teams make the mistake of chasing the massive moments just because the view counts look huge. As I said in last month’s Substack post, “Social SEO: Why Brands Are Thinking About Keywords on Social”, true strategy means prioritising relevance over size. If a small joke is going around your exact industry, joining in makes you look like a true insider.

If a massive global trend happens, you can certainly take part, but only if your category actually has a logical reason to speak up. The conversation needs to be happening right now, and your post needs to feel natural to the people already talking.

5. Balance your trendy content with original ideas

When you look at successful posts under this system, you can see how well it works. Take the Popeyes and Pope Leo XIV example. A few brands jumped on it within hours. Popeyes won because they moved fast, spent zero money to make it, and spoke straight to their buyers on X.

That said, we shouldn’t view trends as a cheap fallback for low budgets, nor should we resort to the absolutely lowest-effort ones all the time. Content creators get millions of views from their bedrooms using nothing but a phone and a good idea. Not having a massive budget is never an excuse to stop telling original stories.

Ideas do not cost anything. Developing an original series or content property takes a lot more focus and creative energy than jumping on whatever is popular on Tuesday. But building your own thing is what actually drives long-term growth and impact for your business.

Wrapping Up

It’s easy to jump on every social media trend and call it a strategy. The real skill is knowing which trends make sense for your brand and finding a way to join the conversation naturally. As marketers, our job is to move quickly, make sure our message is relevant, earn our place in the conversation, and bring something fresh to the table.

At Kaizen, we see trendy content as a light, quick addition to your main content plan. Trends should be a careful percentage of what you post; it is a fun way to show people you are listening and part of internet culture. When a social media trend perfectly meets all 5 tests above, make it quickly and get it out there. Once that is done, get straight back to work on the main, original stories that build your brand over time.

Things worth reading

Day Trade Your Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk

This book will teach you that getting organic traffic requires knowing what your target audience wants to see right now, rather than trying to get your way into their news feed.

The Steal Like an Artist Audio Trilogy by Austin Kleon

This will give you a clear idea of how to combine social media trends with your own style to create something absolutely unique.

The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton

This is a must-read if you want to learn about the psychological factors that drive people to click and purchase your product after watching your social media posts.