Why do I love Twitter? Trending topics. Local trending topics. Worldwide trending topics. You name them. Let’s kick-start this article by providing some quick stats for Twitter provided by Twitter.Apparently, Twitter has 320 million monthly active users. Big time brands, SMEs, celebrities & freelancers use Twitter as a powerful platform to host campaigns. A trending topic is highly-searched and drives a huge amount of traffic for a short time. What a worldwide trending topic gives you is exposure, not longevity. How it affects you and your brand is entirely up to you so you have to think thoroughly what you want to achieve with a successful trending topic implementation.
If you manage to get your topic/phrase/hashtag trend worldwide, you will reach millions of people in a matter of minutes. The best part is that you can make this happen without spending a cent. However, if you want a guaranteed worldwide trending topic, YOU CAN have it (with a $200,000 price tag).
In this article we are not going to cover the logistics of finding $200,000 for your trending topic. I am here to show you how I have started over 80 (I kid you not) worldwide trending topics in the last four years for free.
Long story short, I run a Twitter account that supports Jared Leto and his band Thirty Seconds To Mars. It is on its way to 50,000 followers and it has evolved to something greater than just another fan-page. People call me by my first name, I post things about my life, I share all kinds of content that I find entertaining and challenging, I ask questions to make people think. I built a community through the years that I am very proud of.
Building a following and getting that following to trust you can’t happen overnight. So if you don’t have a following to begin with, I can’t come up with a way to get your hashtag trending. You need people to spread your message. You could have thousands of followers but if you don’t interact with them, you will not be able to get them to help you. Why would they? It’s not like they will gain anything. Unless...
You give them something to tweet for. My followers’ main interests are music and film (by 95% and 70% respectively, thank you very much Twitter Analytics). My account focuses on them since Jared Leto, the lead singer of the band, is also an established actor (He won an Oscar in 2014, no big deal). Therefore, I trend things related to them and I ask for help from people who are interested in them (aka my followers).
The phrases I get to trend are usually announcements and suggestions for the band. There is almost always a specific reason we decide to trend something.