Participate in trends—wisely

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Trends shift constantly, and you’ll need to be adept at online culture and know what’s most relevant to your audience to select the right ones. The Sprout Social Index 2025 highlighted an interesting tension in how social media practitioners and consumers view trends online. 98% of practitioners said that social content must keep up with online trends and culture. While consumers mostly agree, around half said that original content is what makes their favorite brands memorable. Yet, almost all respondents stated they want brands to understand online culture even if they don’t participate in it.

So what does this mean? Basically, brands need to find that “just right” balance of relevancy and resonance.

This requires identifying the trending topics and formats that your audience singapore mobile database enjoys most. Social media listening is a critical strategy to find that perfect mix of trends and original content. It will help you uncover trends that might fit your brand even if they’re not specifically tied to your products or industry. For example, we tapped the “holding space” trend born from Wicked’s press tour to showcase social listening data around the film and the meme.

Sprout's IG "holding space" post

For this post, we used Sprout Social’s AI-enabled social listening, which analyzes 50,000 social posts each second. With Sprout listening, you can set up specific social listening queries based on your brand, competitors and key trends to get real time insight on what parts of online culture are most important to your audience.

4. Let your product or service take center stage
Organic content is a great vehicle to showcase your products or services. In the Index, 63% of consumers said the quality of a brand’s product or service is what makes their favorite brands stand out on social.