Blogging about trending topics is an effective way to showcase your expertise and stay relevant. And there’s no better place to tap into trending topics than on Twitter, one of the leading social media platforms. Finding blog post ideas using Twitter’s trending feature is quick and easy. Here’s how to best utilize it.
Anatomy of Twitter’s Explore page
First, let’s look at how the trending topics page on Twitter is structured. Click on the Explore section in your sidebar to access trending topics. Once in Explore, you’ll see tabs titled ‘For You’ and ‘Trending,’ as well as high-level topics such as ‘Entertainment’ and ‘Sports.’ Twitter may update this page in the future, but in general, these are the main sections you’ll likely see on the Explore page:
Trending hashtags
Twitter will display clickable hashtags that are trending based on your location preferences and the people you follow. Hashtags are a way for social media platforms to index keywords, phrases and topics. Clicking on a hashtag will display all tweets that have used the hashtag.
Trending news stories
This section will show at least one breaking news story trending on Twitter. Often it will be displayed at the top of the Explore page accompanied by a featured image. Clicking on the news story will show commentary from official news publications and thought leaders.
Trending tweets by topic
This section contains trending tweets based on people and topics you follow on your main timeline. Here you can also manage the topics you follow.
Check Twitter’s Explore page regularly for topics that stand out to you. If you actively use Twitter, this is also a chance to engage with your followers by creating or retweeting posts from a given trending topic. Once you find a topic you can offer your expertise on, it’s time to turn it into a blog post.
Create a blog post based on Twitter’s trending topics
Now that you’ve found a trending topic of interest, you can expand on it with a blog post while checking all of the ‘best practices’ boxes for relevance, timeliness and SEO-friendliness.
One great thing about using Twitter is leveraging existing tweets to add content to your blog post. Most blog hosting platforms, such as WordPress, let you embed tweets as-is within the post editor. Inserting existing tweets into a post is as effective as using block quotes, if not more so. You can even insert your own tweets on the subject.
After you’ve created your post, you can then share it on Twitter using the same trending hashtags or keywords you used to find the topic in the first place. This adds value for your followers and allows you to participate in the larger conversation. And there’s always the chance that your tweets will appear in these trending channels.
Most importantly, paying attention to Twitter’s trending topics can keep you informed on important cultural events, whether they occur globally, locally, within a given niche, or solely on Twitter. So if you’re struggling to come up with post ideas, you now have a new source of inspiration within Twitter’s trending topics page.