Why Jumping on Trends Can Hurt Your Business

It might feel like you’re letting a big opportunity pass if you don’t act fast on trends while they’re fresh. After all, trends are literally defined by what’s popular, what people are searching for and what people care about RIGHT NOW!

Many brands try to get in on the action when things trend by commenting or participating. While that’s usually an innocuous move, there are plenty of brands that would have been better off not doing so (the DiGiorno Pizza and Singapore Airlines examples are particularly damning).

But even if you don’t completely botch it like we saw in the aforementioned example, jumping on trends for attention isn’t something you should do without considering your strategy, goals and reputation.

Why it makes sense for “mass appeal commodity” brands to jump on trends

Although those examples were disastrous, it does makes sense for DiGiorno Pizza and Singapore Airlines to have trend-spotting mechanisms in their marketing blueprints.

Both brands deliver mass appeal commodities—stuff that EVERYONE can relate to. It’s safe to assume that anyone seeing their posts will be interested in what their brands are about. In their case, it makes sense to reach as many people as possible, no matter how undefined.

…But does it make sense for you?

How “trend hopping” can actually damage your connection with your audience

Let’s say you sell web security services and you tweet to match a trend. Thanks to that tweet, you get an additional 10,000 visitors to your site (now THAT’S being optimistic). How many of them are going to be REAL prospects? Our guess is: Not very many.

So how valuable is that traffic really?

Now on the other side of the coin, let’s say your audience sees that same exact tweet. For argument’s sake, let’s say your social media accounts have been open for a few years and without fail, you’ve been tweeting and posting about each and every social trend that’s sprung up during that time period.

Is this kinda behaviour gonna keep an audience loyal to you? It’s worth thinking about. They probably didn’t follow you in the first place for your witty commentary on the social climate. They probably followed you hoping you’d provide relevant value and free snippets of expertise related to their interests.

Why risk annoying your loyal, value-hungry audience with trendy tweets and posts just to get a bunch of non-buyers to see you? The better option would be to use them to provide value to your audience and build trust (leading to more buyers and loyal customers).

Just a little food for thought.

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