With so much content being posted every single day, it can be overwhelming for social media managers to keep track of the latest news or trending topics to make content around. I’ve made a little list of things I do to ensure I never miss a trending topic (I’m a SaaS founder, and I also run its social media platforms. I absolutely can’t spend all my time on the socials though).
1. Google Trends:
This is used mostly as an SEO tool, but I find the Trending Searches option very handy. It uses a very simple interface to tell you about what’s trending on Google Searches on a particular day, in a country of your choice. While the first few trending topics might be known to you, there’ll definitely be some unexpected ones when you scroll down, that you can make content around
2. Feedly:
In a nutshell, Feedly (a tool that I’m NOT affiliated with) lets you create distinct ‘feeds’ with topics of your own choices and interests, and aggregates information from sites across the Web to finally present it in one space. There’s a free version, however, I recommend shelling out the $6/month for the Pro plan. Once you start using it, there’s really no going back 
3. Discussion forums:
Follow pages related to your industry, on Reddit and Quora! Redditors and Quorans are insanely proactive (you prolly know it). Apart from going through subs, there’s also a dedicated section called ‘Popular’ which I find pretty convenient. Takes me through the trending topics of the day.
4. Create a Twitter stream:
There are many ways to do Twitter streams, but for the purpose of finding trending topics and news, you should start by creating a stream by hashtags. Add relevant tweets, and you’ll start receiving updates literally seconds after a particular event (concerning your interest/hashtags)
5. Browse the socials daily:
You can never understate how important it is to ACTIVELY browse the socials all day. Spend time looking at your industry socials every single day, take notes and keep referring to them as you consider opportunities to put out content or even engage with other brands.
It’s basically become a morning routine for me to go through these, and they’re generally VERY helpful in my scramble for fresh content. Let me know how they work for you!
PS: I’ve been recommended BuzzSumo as well to discover new platform insights and content ideas, but I’ve never used this, and can’t tell you my experience.
