With almost 2 billion monthly users and growing, Facebook has cemented itself as one of the best resources for connecting with others on the web. For businesses, it provides a unique intersection by allowing you to quickly spread information while still maintaining a personal touch and building a good rapport with your followers. With its trending topics section, Facebook provides a simple way for its users to engage with important and popular stories, and offers businesses a unique opportunity to hop into the discussion as well.
What are Trending Topics?
Trending topics can vary widely and are broken up into five categories: Top Trends, Politics, Science & Technology, Sports, and Entertainment. Therefore, the degree of engagement, traction, and sharing that allows a topic to appear as a trending story can be dependent on what else is trending in that category.
How Does a Topic Enter the Trending List?
The trending topics are an aggregate of the day’s headlines. Facebook’s goal is to become a top destination for news. Your story will need traction on multiple well-sourced, heavily trafficked, and frequently read websites; think New York Times or NBC. Trending topics are based on a secret, and constantly changing algorithm. You may recall hearing in the last few months about Facebook’s trending topics playing a controversial role in the 2016 presidential election. Because false stories were being widely shared, Facebook has tweaked their algorithm to promote more verifiable content.
How Can I Get My Content Trending?
Because the algorithm is constantly evolving, it can make be difficult to focus on making a single story or topic reach the trending list. Numbers are secretive. When Facebook tweaked their algorithm, they updated the way topics are displayed. Topics no longer show the number of people talking about a story. This makes it harder to have an estimate of the level of engagement competing stories are generating, and also makes it difficult to estimate a story’s likelihood of trending based on engagement alone.
What Are the Different Parts of the Trending Section?
When you click on a trending topic, you will find the following sections:
- The Story: this is the main article that the trending topic was pulled from
- Videos: video content related to the topic
- Photos: pics taken from related posts
- Top Posts: related posts from official pages
- Public Posts: related user posts
How Can I Engage With Trending Topics for Exposure?
Since getting an article itself trending is a secret process and seemingly limited to high-profile news outlets, the best hope one would have of appearing in the general trending section would be to piggyback off an already trending related topic and encourage enough engagement to push your post into the “top posts” or “public posts” section of the trending page. So for example, if a new article was trending that discussed a study that linked sleep deprivation to Alzheimer’s, you could write a post linking to that article and discuss how your sleep apnea dental treatment can help lead to better and more consistent sleep. Or similarly, if an article about ways to keep your heart healthy is trending, you could link to it and talk about how oral health is an important and often overlooked factor. The main thing to keep in mind is that you need to be directly linking to the trending article or a related article. Simply discussing the topic won’t be enough to get you into the trending section, as the algorithm is structured more around particular posts than general topics.
Another thing to keep in mind is that trending topics don’t seem to be based on your location or interests, meaning that even after going through the effort of trying to get your posts to appear in the trending section, there’s absolutely no guarantee that anyone that comes across it there is located anywhere near you.
Can I Get My Posts in the Trending Section?
The trending section acts as a compilation of popular topics across the internet at large, not just on Facebook. Once a topic is identified as trending, it’s approved by a member of the Facebook team that will also write a short description for the story. These employees function as the final gatekeepers to ensure that topics that make it into the trending section meet the required standards. Before a story or topic particular to your business could enter the trending section, it would already have to have been picked up by a number of news sources and be gaining a significant amount of traffic and exposure on the web. However, using the earlier discussed tactic of jumping into discussions about trending topics is a much easier and more effective way to quickly have your business seen by others engaging in the discussion.
Are There Other Ways to Get Myself Trending?
While the trending topics section on Facebook is not necessarily something you can muscle your way into, there are plenty of other ways to get yourself trending online. Regular posts and engagement on your Facebook page will still help you remain more visible in the feeds of your followers, and other platforms such as Twitter and Instagram can be effective ways to build up organic traction for hashtags, events, or other campaigns.
Can You Summarize That For Me?
In conclusion, while getting your posts trending is not impossible, a significantly easier strategy is to jump onto existing trending topics, as these are already present in user’s feeds. Think of it like this: rather than trying to get your post or topic ranking in the trending section, you are better off posting in ways that will allow you to engage in an already ongoing discussion.
For any further questions you may have about trending topics or any other social media tools, simply contact Identity Dental Marketing. Our team of internet marketing specialists are here to help you get the most out of your online presence. Contact us today to learn more!
