Staying on top of trends just got easier. The question becomes how do we bring these trends into our own marketing models and programs.
With the help of Facebook IQ on Tuesday, we took a look at which topics on Facebook and Instagram were hot in March—the eighth installment in a series from the social media company and Adweek. Today marketers are in for perhaps an even a sweeter treat—a comprehensive look at what subjects will likely be increasingly buzzy on Facebook in the coming weeks.
It’s an extension of our exclusive access to Facebook IQ data visualizations, which delve into U.S.-based discussions happening on Facebook (but not Instagram). Generally, some of the topics this month and beyond should intrigue brand-minded creatives as well as product developers.
Take a look at the six topics below and scroll down for more on how these topics could interest the advertising community.
Buddha’s hand—an interesting-looking citrus fruit in Asia—jumps off the screen, doesn’t it? And it should, especially if you are a marketer for Grey Goose, Finlandia, Absolut, etc. Bartenders and mixologist-wannabes are evidently mentioning Buddha’s hand along with vodka cocktails on Facebook at a strong pace.
And women, more than men, are frequently chatting about cortados on Facebook. The general popularity of the espresso drink on social media nowadays should catch the eye of social-media managers for brands like Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and Dunkin’ Donuts.
The rest of the “topics to watch” are potentially fascinating: education entertainment (podcasts, music videos and DJing), kalamkari (hand-painted or block-printed cotton textiles), videotelephony (audio-video technology) and wuxia (Chinese martial arts fiction). They are fairly particular and could be helpful to niche marketers of all kinds.
In terms of Facebook IQ’s methodology for this ongoing project, its predictive tools analyze the long-term consistent growth of a topic on Facebook. Using data from hundreds of thousands of conversations, the social network said it’s able to forecast what discussions will continue to escalate—based on how other topics normally trend upward in volume, variance and rates of consistent growth.
When predicting whether chatter around specific topics will increase, Facebook stated that in early tests it has been 80 percent accurate so far.
