Last month, Facebook released the first of a new monthly report series called 'Topics to Watch'. It's an interesting concept - based on surges in relative topic mentions across their network, Facebook's looking to highlight the next big thing before it becomes a thing.
It works like this:
As you can see, Facebook detects a trending topic based on spikes in its regular mention volume - so you're not going to get an issue like 'Trump' suddenly show up as trending, because the relative mention volume is normally fairly high. What Facebook's trying to find is unique topics that are suddenly rising in attention, and are likely to continue that growth.
As per Facebook:
"Topics to Watch are conversation topics that have shown long-term growth on Facebook, which we predict will likely continue to grow. The discussion about these topics mirrors the volume, variance and measures of consistent growth shown in other conversation topics which grew consistently. If another topic shows similar early growth patterns to previous topics with long-term growth (such as Kale) we can expect it to continue increasing"
In other words, Facebook's using the same modeling they've seen on other topics which have gone on to become major trends to detect new ones. According to Facebook's research team, 80% of the topics they've identified in this way have gone on to become more prominent trends, as predicted.
As shown the above screenshot, mentions of 'Jade' have increased almost 2x their regular volume over the last month, and nearly 6x their normal rate over the past year, flagging it as a trend to watch. But what's of most interest is the breakout chart of who's driving the conversation around each topic. With 'Jade', you can see that men aged 34-49 and women aged 50-64 are the biggest cause of the spike in attention. That's really interesting data - with this insight, you could consider how, if those demographics relate to your target market, you could use it to angle your own marketing efforts. In the case of jade, maybe you could put more focus on jade colors, for example, which might help boost the appeal of your content or products, given its already trending.
It's an experimental approach, for sure, but the idea of Facebook's trends report is to help marketers stay in touch with what's resonating amongst their target audiences. As such, it could be worth taking into account these latest trends and doing a bit of digging to get some more specifics about how people are discussing them - and whether the audiences you're seeking to reach are showing an interest.
Facebook's 'Topics to Watch' report for April is below. If you need me, I'll be over here, writing a novel about cowboys who are into modern physics.