Turning Trending Topics Into Thumb-stopping Social Content

Part of my job as a copywriter is constantly keeping up with cultural conversations happening across the social-sphere.

Responding to trends is a critical element of the social strategy for any brand, but the approach is always going to be different. For a brand to be successful at participating in social media trends, they have to come at it with an authentic approach.

Here's how I approached crafting culturally relevant content for a few different clients, each with their own distinct brand personality...

CoComelon

Company: Moonbug Entertainment

My Role: Senior Social Media Manager

Approach To Trends:

Our biggest fans were children, but our social audience was their parents. Our approach was to be humorous and cheeky, never lowbrow just for laughs. Legal restrictions prohibited us from jumping into trends that involved certain trending sounds, so we leaned into more predictable cultural beats – like holidays, award shows, sporting events, etc. – along with larger social trends like memes, pop culture tropes, dance videos, ASMR videos, DIY content, and more.

Looney Tunes

Company: Movement Strategy

My Role: Senior Copywriter/Social Media Manager

Approach To Trends:

For Looney Tunes, we treated the characters as if they lived in our universe, often capturing videos or images that we'd then superimpose them into a la Space Jam. Our creative approach also involved adding an editorial layer over repurposed show footage. To maximize virality and follower potential, we kept content family friendly with a slightly subversive edge that would appeal to our more mature followers.

Kool-Aid Man

Company: VaynerMedia

My Role: Senior Copywriter

Approach To Trends:

We leaned into trending conversations most heavily on Twitter. To remain true to the Kool-Aid Man character, we were only permitted to say the character's signature catch phrase" Oh yeah," so nearly half of Kool-Aid's twitter content consisted of quote tweets from users across the Twitter-verse to which I'd add our own flavor of commentary to. I'd often seek out the top tweets of the day and prioritize engaging with those, knowing that's where the most eyeballs were and where we'd reach the largest audience of potential new followers. The remaining bulk of our Twitter content was largely comprised of ASCII art – a graphic design technique where keyboard symbols are arranged to create images. Viral tweets often utilized this technique to some degree, and I took it full throttle to create dozens of viral posts of our own.

Mr. Peanut

Company: VaynerMedia

My Role: Senior Copywriter

Approach To Trends:

Leaned into trending conversations most heavily on Twitter. Mr. Peanut had a big personality with a lot to say and Twitter was the best playground for expressing cultural commentary. He jumped in on the buzziest conversations, got chummy with celebs and fellow brands, and took full advantage of trending hashtag challenges. We also had an active Twitter audience and often started our own hashtag challenges that they'd eat right up,