The infamous Facebook algorithm that decides what shows up on people’s timeline makes it tough to get visibility for your page or your profile on Facebook.
One way to try and get new visitors (and likes or followers) is to jump on a Facebook trend.
Facebook keeps track of what’s trending. On the desktop version, this is visible in the right column (it will show the first few trends—click ‘see more’ to get the entire list and click on each trend to get the links Facebook deems relevant). Recently that list looks like this for instance:
In a previous post about whether or not to jump on a viral web hype, we discussed three questions to consider, including the question of whether or not the hype fits your core message.
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of pages (and people) try to use a Facebook trend to their advantage. Some are subtle about it—and thus more or less effective. Others, not so much.
Consider this trend from a few weeks ago: a story broke that a high school kid had made 72 million dollars in the stock trade. That’s a pretty great story, right? It’s uplifting, positive and you can’t beat an underdog-type story like this. So this is what happened and I’m showing just two examples of people who jumped on that Facebook trend:
The first one merely posts a link to the article with a very short comment. It’s a gamble to see if Facebook lets it show up on the ‘Trends’ page, but in his case that paid off. But would anyone really go to his page, or even like it just because he posted about something that was trending? I doubt it.
The second guy is far less subtle. He references the trend by using the key words ‘Stuyvesant high school’ and then posts a completely different link, one that literally has nothing to do with it. His core message is something else entirely and isn’t even remotely connected to trading, stock market, students, or whatever.
Will it have gotten him views? Maybe. Is it effective in the long run? I doubt it.
Plus there is actually a fourth question to consider when deciding whether or not to jump on a hype of trend:
Is it true?
Turns out this stock market kid had lied. My initial reaction was: yeah, you could’ve seen that one coming! If he’d claimed to have made $72,000, it would have been believable. But 72 million? No way that story wouldn’t have broken sooner. Like before his first million.
But everyone still jumped on that trend and in hindsight, some of them looked pretty foolish for doing so. In journalism there’s a golden rule of checking facts, a rule that unfortunately many media have seemed to forgotten. As a blogger or social media user you don’t have the same due diligence journalists have. But you can still use your brain. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Take yourself and your brand seriously and stay on the safe side. Don’t jump on a Facebook trend or any other viral hype unless you know for sure it’s true. And even then, make sure you do it in a subtle, believable way that fits your core message.
Eric Dye says
There are several that I see popping up, but they’re usually things that you can do a quick Snopes check on. It’s so much easier to click “Like” and “Share.”
Rachel Blom says
In this case it hadn’t been exposed as a lie…yet. Snopes is indeed the mandatory check before sharing stuff like that, but a healthy dose of rational thinking doesn’t hurt either!
Eric Dye says
For real.