Do you like to jump on the latest social media trends? Social media is meant to be fun and, well, social. So, the popularity and evolution of trends make so much sense.

As brands, we see everyone else having fun, so why can’t we join in? Does our content have to be all about business?

It’s easy to think that trends are all about hopping on a bandwagon and have no real value, but it’s so much more than that, especially for business owners.

In today’s episode, let’s talk about the importance of aligning trends with your brand values, avoiding cringe-worthy moments, and staying true to your audience. We'll even touch on the ethical considerations of leveraging trends and the potential pitfalls to watch out for.

So, whether you're a content creator, business owner, or just want to nerd out on the history and evolution of trending content, this episode is for you.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about:

  • Pre-social media trend chasing
  • The decentralization of content creation
  • The new rules for trending content
  • Why trends have a shorter life expectancy
  • The secret ingredient that makes a trend a trend
  • How to know if jumping on a trend is right for your business
  • The danger of going all-in on trending content

This Episode Was Made Possible By:

Riverside All-in-One Podcast & Video Platform
Visit Riverside and use the code DREA to get 15% off any Riverside individual plan. We use it to record all our podcast interviews!

Resources mentioned:

Grab the Digital Brain Power Pack
Check out the Everything Page
Trend Savvy

Watch the Episode Below:

Transcript

Andréa Jones (00:00):
Before Twitter and TikTok trends took months or even years to spread, and today, trends can spread in a matter of hours. But as a brand, it can be really challenging to know, should I, shouldn't I hop on a trend, especially as a brand. Today we're going to dive into all of that goodness and more. Let's get into it.

Intro (00:36):
Welcome to The Savvy Social Podcast, the show that blends stories and strategies to help businesses create engaged and profitable online communities using the unique power of social media. And now, your host, Andréa Jones.

Andréa Jones (00:53):
Today's episode is brought to you by Riverside fm. It is the online virtual recording studio we use to host this podcast that you're listening to right now. Check it out for yourself by going to Riverside fm. Use the code Drea and you'll get 15% off any of their plans. That's one 5% off any of those plans. The code is Drea, d r e a, and I've got a special link in the show notes for you. Riverside is amazing. I love using it personally and I only would recommend it if I'm using it personally. There you go.

(01:26):
Alright, let's hop into this conversation about trends and pop culture and how it relates to brands. But first we got to start off with the history of trends and kind of dive into the historical perspective of using pop culture in marketing. So pre-social media, we had things like television ads and radio ads and print media, and those media sources would oftentimes use celebrities to showcase their brands. They would lean on the personal brands, essentially of other people to advertise their products.

(01:59):
We have all sorts of things from the cinema I remember. So movies. I remember when Napoleon Dynamite came out when I was in grade school and my whole class was quoting it back and forth to each other, but you only knew what those quotes were if you went and saw the movie. Same thing with concerts or music. When we think about the impacts they had on culture, the process of consuming that piece of media was quite involved. You either had to go to the concert or the live event, or you had to go to record stores, music stores, and purchase your music. I distinctly remember doing that as a kid, going in to pick out my favorite CDs. That totally tells you what era I was a kid, right? If I use the word cd, we would go to the store and we would pick out our favorite ones.

(02:59):
They had these little sections where you could listen to the song. So sometimes we'd literally just go and hang out and listen to music in the store. Wild times. Or we think about other things like mailers, fan mail, fan clubs. If you were really into something, you could sign up and get physical mail from that thing that you were a hobbyist of or that you were a fan of. Music videos also had a great significant cultural impact. When we think about M T V back in the day, how people dressed, how people talked, all of that came from some music videos that they consumed. And to consume them, you had to watch M T V. There really wasn't another way to do it at the time. So all of these sources of information became the way that pop culture trends were embedded into our culture.

(03:54):
Fast forward to today, we have platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, and y'all know I will forever say Twitter first. It takes my brain a lot, say X, formerly known as Twitter. But today we have brands like X, formerly known as Twitter, we have TikTok, we have Instagram, we have Facebook, even Threads. So Meta's, newest social platform threads are all changing how pop culture, how trends are disseminated. There are a number of reasons why trends catch on so quickly. First of all, it's just the speed of social media. It's instant. You post today, people see it zero seconds later. So trends can be consumed fairly instantly, and because of that, there is an acceleration to the spread, the potential virality of these trends. So when we think about something like TikTok, immediately people are being served. That video that was created. There also is a decentralization of content creation.

(04:58):
So in order to be popular in the days of the past, you had to be a celebrity and to be a celebrity, it was a very challenging thing if you didn't just show up and could be a celebrity. Whereas right now, that could happen to anyone with the rise of influencer marketing and things like that. Literally, anyone with a smartphone can create content and become famous, famous online, becoming a celebrity in their own right. So we have people setting trends who never had access to being a trendsetter to begin with. So this creates the potential for more trends to be created. We also are seeing, especially with the rise of TikTok, this idea of remix culture.

(05:47):
So the idea that someone creates something and then the rest of us recreate it in our own way. So one trend essentially can be iterated and iterated and iterated upon thousands of times each time with its own unique twist or spin, and that really helps match that virality. We really haven't seen that prior to this point. I think something similar would potentially be a trending topic or trending hashtag on X, formerly known as Twitter. But even then it was kind of a no-no to copy people. Pre TikTok, you didn't copy other content creators. You came up with your own thing. And if you did, you would do something like retweet, which is now called repost. This makes me so sad.

(06:37):
You would retweet something and you would add your thoughts on top, whereas now literally taking a dance, a saying, a, a style that someone else is doing and recreate it in your own way is kind of the point of all of this viral content. There's also now such a visual element to virality and TikTok changed the game with this single-handedly, and I know I feel like I'm on the TikTok train right now, but it's true. Prior to TikTok, you had to have a completely edited video to upload to social media in order for you to use it, right? So prior to TikTok, you had to know video editing skills. You had to know like Adobe or at the very least, iMovie to upload things. Whereas with TikTok, the app itself came with a built-in in app editor, meaning you don't need a third party editing tool to create content.

(07:33):
It came with filters, it came with ways to splice videos, it came with ways to edit, add captions, add stickers. This was not previously done at this scale before and it was not available readily available to everyone before. So TikTok changed that because now trends can be very visual. They're all video and it's easy for people to adapt and get started. I think's video editor is still one of the better ones today, even though Instagram now has one in YouTube, source has one, TikTok is just way better. The other thing with viral content is that, or trending content, is that there's an immediate feedback loop. So content creators, brands, business owners get that instant dopamine hit of likes and comments and shares immediately so we can immediately see if something's taking off or not. And so as a creator, as a business owner, you kind of can see which trends work for you and which ones don't, and the algorithm is helping you with that.

(08:39):
So trends are a signal to the algorithm that you are playing in the game in the realm of what everyone else is doing. And because there's this familiarity as a consumer, the algorithm notices that and then starts preferring trending content. So even someone with a smaller audience has the potential to be promoted to a broader audience by leveraging a trend, which means more people are using trends. Trends also help niche communities find each other. Prior to social media marketing was quite general to capture the general audience, right? There wasn't these verticals and niches of smaller groups because if you're selling Honey Nut Cheerios, you don't want to go specifically to a specific segment of the audience. That's a honey nut Cheerios. You want to sell them to as many people as possible. So you're using very broad marketing techniques to sell those. Whereas now with the power of social media, we can get super specific into those niche communities.

(09:45):
One that I'm in, that I am loving right now is spicy book Tok. I like a little romance novel that's kind of raunchy. It's such a small subsection of people in the grand scheme of the world, even though romance novels are still the top selling novel. Let's not get into that conversation right now. But this is not something that was widely marketed to me specifically before, but because of my preferences and how I use TikTok, TikTok picked up that I liked those videos and now keep showing to me, showing them to me, and now I'm in this beautiful niche community that I would've never found before. Because of all of this though, there is a decrease in the lifespan of trends. So trends used to last a lot longer. That's why we have such distinct styles to decades. When we think about the seventies, we think about the eighties, we think about the nineties, even the early two thousands, there's a very distinct cultural reset for a lot of those decades, and I think it's going to be harder because of how quickly trends rise and fall with the power of social media.

(10:54):
So trends that use the last years, may only last months now, and trends that use the last months may only last minutes now. So it'll be interesting to see how that impacts the state of things. But outside of that, some of this pop culture and trending content and kind of the power of social media has broken down barriers with celebrities and influencers. So as a lay person, I can comment on a celebrity's post and maybe get a comment back. For instance, I'm really loving Snoop Dogg's LinkedIn right now, if y'all haven't seen it. It is fascinating. He is doing a great job over there as a personal brand. And then even now, when we think about how users use social media, and the reason why I'm making this podcast is you don't have to be a celebrity to leverage trending content brands. Entities can leverage trending content, memes, challenges, hashtags, and kind of jump in and create their own content as an entity.

(12:01):
So you don't have to be a personal brand to jump in on these things. You can be a collective. So all of that historical context, it's super important when we think about trends because it goes into how as businesses, brands, personal brands, content creators, how we're leveraging trends today. But let's define what is a trend. So in order for something to be trendy, it kind of has to have the potential to be repeatable and adaptable, okay? So when something is a trend, it's something that needs to be repeatable or adaptable. It can't be too specific that other people can't repeat it or adapt it, but it needs to be something that that segment of the audience understands enough to kind of clone it into their own life, into their own business, into their own brand. So we think about this idea of remix culture that we're in right now.

(13:01):
The whole point of these trends typically is that other people are jumping in on them, which leads to viral sharing and engagement. In order for it to be a trend, one of the leading indicators of this is super high levels of engagement and people sharing it. So my husband and I, we have one of our love languages is to share TikToks back and forth. We see a TikTok, we share it. He sees the TikTok, he shares it with me. So you may have this going on with someone in your life where you like them, you send them something that you think will make them laugh, that you think they will enjoy. This is part of trending content. It's shareable. It also has to have some sort of cultural or social relevance in order to be a trend. So it could be a cultural event. So it doesn't have to be funny.

(13:50):
A lot of people think trends are just dancing or memes trending. Content can be serious too. At the time of recording this, there was a recent announcement of the war between Israel and Palestine and the atrocities that are happening over there that is trending content. It is a culturally relevant moment that has a lot of significant impact on how people are navigating their world. So the mood, the general mood of society, cultural shifts, news, current events and pop culture all have an impact on what is a trend. Now, trends also have this unique thing where they oftentimes are used by influencers and celebrities. So we really can tell that a trend is taking off, so to speak, when influencers, celebrities, folks with large accounts are also picking up that trend and amplifying it in their content. This creates sort of like a cross platform spread of the trends.

(14:53):
So sometimes trends are on the platforms only on TikTok only, or it's on Facebook only. But oftentimes when it truly becomes a trend is when it crosses to multiple platforms. Trends also don't have a specific lifespan. It can be weeks, months, minutes, but the longer the trend goes on, the more potential for the intensity and the volume of that trend. Trends also typically have an emotional connection with the audience. It could be funny, it can be serious, it could be a nostalgia thing. I'm in nineties nostalgia stuff right now. My Instagram reels feed is a lot of nineties nostalgia things, and it's just funny to me how we all have that collective experience. It feels very like an emotional connection.

(15:44):
The last thing about trends is that they're not just something that people watch. They have to be something that people participate in, they join in on. And this is where I say trends are becoming shorter and shorter because I also remember things like the ice bucket challenge and planking. This was like a la 2013, I want to say. So 10 years ago, those trends were happening in my world and they lasted a lot longer then. Whereas now they're a lot shorter. But the unifying thing with these trends is that users can participate in them. So it doesn't just live on the internet. It starts spreading out into the real world, which I mean, who knows if internet in the real world is any different? It's all blending together now. So when we understand this as a business owner, the historical context, the definition of a trend, then we start thinking to ourselves, well, are trends for me?

(16:54):
Does it make sense for my business to hop on a trend? And specifically, I see this question happen a lot with business owners. If you're a content creator for instance, and you have more of an influencer business model, so you sell, you work with brands and brand deals and you create content, and maybe you get paid through the apps that way, the hopping on trends makes a lot more sense for you. But if you're a coach or a course creator, or if you are a therapy group or something like that, right? You struggle with this, you're like, do I hop on these trends? So I want to talk a little bit about that, but we'll take a quick break and when we come back, we'll dive into all those important questions.

(17:44):
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(19:55):
Alright, so or shouldn't you hop on the trend, but let's talk about the perks of hopping on a trend as a brand, and then we'll talk about the dangers as well. So trends can be great for brands, and I am pro trend. I like a good trend because they increase visibility and they instantly boost your engagement. Remember how I said the algorithm likes trends? Mr. S out here trying to match your trend to what everyone else is consuming. All of that beautifulness gives you more brand awareness in your business. So that's more people can potentially see what you have to offer. You're connecting with new people too. When we think about how's algorithm works and how Instagram reels goes out to mostly people who don't follow you, all of this is new people who've never heard of you before. And so we have the opportunity to have that billboard effect or that television ad effect, that radio effect because it's going out to new users.

(20:51):
Whereas prior to this, social media was very much a contained connection based platform. So if I wanted to connect with a brand, I'd have to go to say Sephora's Instagram and click connect with them or follow them in order to see their content. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't see Sephora's content in my feed. Now, I can, unbeknownst to me, stumble across Sephora in my feed just as an example and consume their content and go, Hey, this is for me, and click follow right from there. That really wasn't the way social media worked before. So it gives you this opportunity to connect with new audiences. And this is how a lot of social media algorithms are working today. They are discovery based, meaning they're expecting their consumers to find and enjoy new content. So in your content, your posts, your videos are enjoyable, then they will show up in the feed.

(21:50):
This positions you as a leader in your space because people will find, enjoy, like your content, follow you, dive into your world, get curious, and even with your current followers, it'll show that you are relevant and that you share interests with them. Okay, so with your position here, it's the ability to connect in a way that really wasn't there before. Businesses were pretty serious on social and the ones that were making quite a splash. I think about Taco Bell back in the day on their Twitter, formerly known as Twitter. I know when I think about Taco Bell on Twitter, it was funny, it was irreverence. It was something that was interesting because it was so different. Fast forward to today, and brands that are not interesting or different are kind of stale and people don't really see the need to follow them as much as the brands that are interesting and different.

(22:47):
So those are all the values that trending content can add to your brand. But trending content isn't everything. Okay? So there are some dangers in going with trends. Number one, if you do trends too much, if you're all trends all day, you lose authenticity. You lose that je ne sais quoi that makes you you and you kind of come off as shallow. So especially with a lot of the businesses that I work with, they tend to deal with more serious content pieces. So I work a lot with coaches and therapists and thought leaders, people who are really encouraging their audience to change their life in some sort of way. When we're doing too many trends, it can come across as too silly. So there's a danger in trends because it feels too inauthentic. It feels too silly, it feels like you're trying too hard. Also, if you choose a trend that's completely off brand, you can alienate your audience.

(23:53):
When we choose trends that are so unaligned with what we stand for, we can cross a line and make people feel uncomfortable about our brand, which is the opposite effect. We want people to feel like we know them, we see them, we get them. And sometimes trends don't have that effect. If you hop on a trend without fully understanding it, or if you hop on a trend because you feel like you should in quotes, then your audience can feel like, oh, I don't think this is the right business for me, or this is the right brand for me. I don't feel comfortable investing with that. So those are some of the damages that trends can have. Ultimately, it requires a balance. So balance is so key when you're thinking about peppering in trends into your business model. Typically, I recommend about 90% of your content not be trends.

(24:42):
So 90% or more of your content should be your core content, your core message, your core beliefs. And 10% can be trends. And when I'm saying trends in this sense, I mean straight up the remix culture, you're using a sound on TikTok, you're posting a meme, you're talking about something that's happening in the world, right? 10% of your content could be that the other 90% should be your core content. However, I do like taking an infused approach to building that sort of comradery with your audience, adding in references that they can relate to. So for example, in a lot of my content, I do reference things that are going on in the world. I reference things in pop culture without that being the main focus of the post. I'm not creating a post all about a trend, but I'm peppering them in to build relatability with my audience.

(25:39):
And honestly, it's just how I talk. So there's probably going to be a RuPaul's Drag Race reference. Right now I'm watching Love Is Blind, so I'm probably going to put that somewhere right here in this podcast, maybe even, right? So when we think about trends, we think about pop culture references, we think about news. Unless that is your brand, unless your brand is talking about trends in pop culture and news, we want to go in very lightly and not go in too heavy handed with the trends. I want to talk a little bit about authenticity here. I know it's a buzzword. Authenticity. Oh, we hear it all the time, but it's super important, especially as personal brands. So if you're the face of your business, we don't really want to be a trend chaser. And even if you're not the face of your business, there's a delicate way to go about this, but it does depend on a few things. It depends on your audience and it depends on your value. So we'll talk about that in a minute. But if you want to maintain authenticity, I highly recommend fully understanding your audience, research them, what they're into, what they like, and then just take inspiration from something and put your trend on. So there are a few brands that I love that are doing trends that I want to highlight here because there is a way to do this without overdoing it.

(27:07):
One of the brands that does this really well is Later. Now they are a social media brand. So a lot of their content is trending content, but the way that they approach it is with their audience in mind. They know that their audience is on social media a lot anyways. They also know that their audience is full of social media managers. So while there is a segment of their audience that are business owners who use the tool, so later.com is a social media scheduling tool. Most of their audience is probably social media managers. So a lot of their content is geared towards that, and I love to use their content as inspiration. So when we think about trending content, there is that balance between fully noticed, knowing your audience, researching them, but also not using so many trends that your content becomes too light, too fluffy, too surface level, and you're afraid to go too deep.

(27:58):
Now, I do have to talk about your responsibility here as a business owner because there are some ethical questions with leveraging trends. And I will say we have a lawyer coming on the podcast in two weeks to talk about this. So stay tuned for that episode. But it really comes back to your values as a business owner. And I talk about this a lot on this podcast because it's so important when you understand your values, it can be so clear to you whether a trend is for you or it's not for you. And I find the business owners who get really confused, don't understand their value. An example for me is my brand is about marketing. I don't typically address any news social issues in my marketing. I may address it from the perspective of how you can think about it when you're marketing your business, but I don't as an individual, take a personal stand publicly on a lot of that information.

(29:01):
It's not in my value system. It's not me, okay? In real world, in the internet world, it's just not how I do things. So for me, if there are trend or a topic or something comes up, I already know how I would go about approaching it, how I would go about talking about it, because that's a very clear value for me. Also, if you understand your audience's values, this can also be very, very helpful to you. So a lot of my audience right now is exploring a lot of diversity and equity and inclusion, and how do we be culturally sensitive to the world around us, especially a lot of conversations around neurodiversity and physical diversities. So lot of those conversations are happening, and so I know my audience is interested in those conversations. I'm interested in having those conversations. So if there's anything online that comes up that's trending or topical, I'm probably going to jump into that conversation.

(29:56):
So thinking about your own personal values and your audience's values can really help you dissect if that's for you. Now, one of the questions that I oftentimes get when it comes to trending content as well is how can you be aware of a trend and it's harmful impacts and narratives? So sometimes there are trends that are culturally insensitive, socially insensitive, and you may not be aware of the implications. So definitely study up on this. There's lots of examples of trends. So if something's trending, typically you have a lot of source materials, so go to the source and then also enhance your knowledge. Take cultural studies classes, take d e i classes, learn about alternative perspectives, learn about the impacts of using memes and trends and how that can reflect on your business. So a conversation that happened a few years ago in the online business space around this was using black people in memes.

(30:52):
And there's nothing wrong with using a black person in a meme. That's not what I mean. But there are some uses of black people and memes that are trying to illustrate a certain point that could be slightly racist. So think about the context of why you're choosing that person to use that person as a representative of the message that you're trying to share, and be aware of how you're leveraging these things, but also just know it's an ongoing process. It's a learning process, and just being a business, a brand, a person here on the internet, you're kind of showing up in a way that people can commentate on it. It's the nature of the beast. Now, I want to talk about a few examples of this, of trends and businesses that have used this successfully using three of my clients because I want to show an example of what's possible.

(31:44):
One of my clients, Dr. Karin, did a lip syncing trend. It was a very short, less than ten second video, got over a million views and boosted her business, and it was very simple for her to record. She was actually laying down on her couch or something like that. Did the lip sync put something over top? She talks a lot about toxic relationships and her own history there, and it caught on TikTok and it did really well for her. One of my other clients, Lily from Date Brazen, who has been on this podcast before, her video got 1.8 million views, and it was a TikTok response video, so called a stitch. That's called a remix on Instagram where you take someone's video, five second clip of it and you respond to it similar to retweeting or reposting. So she did that and her video took off as well because she was adding to the conversation there and did really well for her.

(32:38):
Most recent example is Linda Taliaferro. My client on Instagram did a response to something happening in the news, and I love Linda's example because it's not funny or lip-syncing or dancey. It's very serious. There's a tennis player, Coco, who was having a bit of controversy, and Linda took that clip and did a response video and talked about how it relates to gaslighting in the workplace, which is her topic, which she talks about, and 70,000 views. So that video kind of took off. Trending content can absolutely work for your brand. Those are three examples of businesses that it has worked for. But beware, hopping on trending content can have damage to your brand, especially if it's not aligned with your values, it's not aligned with your identity, it's not done well. There's some brands where it's like cringey, it feels like the brand's trying too hard, and that sometimes comes with, you're trying to make it too much like an ad.

(33:43):
It's too much like, I'm doing this so you can buy my stuff. Or you're hopping on a trend way too late, or you're hopping on a trend that's just overdone at that point. And then also it just comes across as like you don't understand the internet or you don't understand social media, you don't understand your audience, and you're trying too hard to go viral. And so all of those things can have a negative impact on brands as well. So as you're going through and considering whether trending pop cultural content is for you, I want to talk a little bit about analytics and how to track this and then the future and how to stay on top of things. So when we think about the role of tracking in social media in general, it's just very challenging. So we have complex buyer's journeys. People see it on one device like their phone, and they're looking at their email on their desktop, and then they're scrolling through social media on their iPad later.

(34:43):
It's very complicated. And then to add to that, there's lots of privacy laws now about how we can collect and track people's data. So we don't have all of that information. There's also limitations on the platform's own internal insights. So I think platforms like Threads right now has no analytics. I have no idea if people are clicking on my links or not. From there, their internal analytics system is non-existent. We also have very long customer journeys as well in social media. So typically the average person on social media doesn't buy the first time they see something. And this happens with any sort of advertising. There's actually way more tracking now with social than there was back in the day. I used the Honey Nut Cheerios example earlier. When that Honey Nut Cheerios ad comes out in the newspaper or it's on the tv, they can't really track exactly how many people saw it. They can't track exactly how many people clipped it out to use it for later. They can't track how many people went and bought that product after seeing the ad, right? So we have more tracking now with social media, but it's still very limited. And then also there's a huge overemphasis on vanity metrics when it comes to trending content and pop culture content.

(36:05):
It gets likes, it gets comments, but I want you to dig deeper. So when you're thinking about analytics, I want you to look at audience growth, but in context, your audience growth should be happening in tandem with growth in other areas of your business. If it's not, this is a vanity metric, my friend. So as your audience grows, you should see your sales growing as your audience grows, you should see your email newsletter list growing. As your audience grows, you should be seeing those other levers in your business, growing visits to your website, people signing up for discovery calls. You should see all of that growing in tandem. If it's not, this may be a vanity play. Also, look at hidden metrics. I love hidden metrics because like we talked about before with trends, trending content is a lot about sharing. It's a lot about sharing.

(36:58):
And so if people are sharing, you got to dig deeper to see those numbers. Usually they don't just pop up when you look at your posts. So dig deeper in your analytics, look at shares, look at saves. That will really tell you the impact of your post. And then also look at off platform communication. Most of my conversions, even though I'm a social media marketer, most of my conversions happen in my email. So people buy my products, they sign up for my things by visiting my email some to some degree by going to my website. Not a lot of people buy something directly from social media from me. It does happen sometimes. In fact, right now, Instagram stories is on fire for that with that link tap in Instagram stories. But most people, they sign up for my list and then they're like in my world for a while, then they buy from me.

(37:45):
Okay? So you've got to know that about your business. So with all that in mind, what does this mean for you in the future of social media, the future of your business? I think the good news is that there is not a huge emphasis on trends in pop culture content, especially the types of trends that are easily identified as a trend. I'm talking a trending sound on TikTok or Instagram. I'm talking a meme. While they have their importance, remember that most of your content is probably not going to be a trend, so don't worry about it. The second thing is that one of my predictions is that there's just in general going to be a de-emphasis on trending content, specifically in the algorithm. I'll talk more about this in my trending 2024 predictions episode. I do one of these predictions episodes every single year is one of my favorite things to do.

(38:35):
It's coming out next month. I'm doing my research for it now. That's one of the things that's popping up, is there's a de-emphasis on trends, and this just happens from the niche down communities that we're seeing on social media. So don't listen to this episode and be like, you have to go all in on trends, but find a way to layer them in a way that feels good for you. And knowing your audience is still the key to all of this. What media are they consuming? What references will they understand from their past life? Who are their icons? Who do they look up to? I can make a reference to going shopping for CDs in the nineties because most of my audience is older than 35 years old. I am not talking to Gen Z here. Y'all get it? I don't have to explain what a CD is.

(39:25):
I know my audience. I know me and my references, so that's how I use trending pop culture references. Now, how do we stay on top of all of this? Either you need to be on the internet all the time, which it's not possible, but we have a business to run here. But if you are a TikTok fanatic like me, you're probably going to find a lot of trends right now. A lot of trends are starting on TikTok, so that is the place to find trends, though it is dominated by Gen Z content right now, but that's okay. There's still some ways to find trends or you can find yourself someone who's a trend hunter, like myself. This episode is not a setup for this set, I promise, but I do have a trend product. It's called Trend Savvy. If you're interested in it, it's on my website, on my everything page online, dray.com/everything.

(40:14):
It's called Trend Savvy. If you sign up for it, I send a weekly trend report and it's great. Then you don't have to search everything for yourself, but if it's not me, there's a bunch of people who do this as well. Find someone who's doing this in a way that you respect, and then you don't have to go live on the internet a hundred percent of the time. This is a lot of work to do all of this research to stay on top of it, stay relevant, and find ways to tie it back into your business. Unless you're a content creator, full-time or an influencer, it's not possible for a lot of us. So get support with that. Alright, that's all for this episode. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'll be back at you with another episode soon. Bye for now.