How to Find Trending Topics: 12 Tools for Topic Ideas

Have you ever found yourself staring at a blank screen, trying to come up with fresh and unique content ideas for your social media channels? 

Well, it’s a common challenge for social media marketers. The key answer here is to keep an eye on what’s trending. We all know how important it is to stay up to date with the latest trends. Whether it be the newest social platform, the hottest hashtags, or the latest influencer collaboration, staying on top of these trends can make all the difference in the success of your campaigns. Trends powerfully reveal what the majority of people are interested about and what their intentions are. 

But how do you find out what’s trending? 

Fortunately, there are many tools available that can help you identify popular topics in your industry and beyond. In this blog post, We’ll share 12 of the best tools for topic inspiration.

12 Best Tools to Find Trending Topic ideas

1. Mandala Cosmos

Mandala Cosmos is social monitoring tools, work best for SMEs, content creators, and influencers. It is an ideal platform for trend discovery – identification of popular posts, keywords, and hashtags. Here users can forge tailor-made feeds and playlists for seamless sharing, collaborative efforts, and comprehensive tracking of online activities.

Main features of Mandala Cosmos are: 

Ripples: With Ripples feature you can create Playlists and monitor several social media posts or profiles showcased in a single dashboard. Users can utilize the data here for benchmarking or creating competitive analysis.

Discover now: Here is where you can explore trending topics on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter and more. You can also search by filters like time, country, language, keyword & hashtag, topic, and categorized. 

Tag Management and Libraries: Efficiently structure your data into libraries, arranging them by tags, channel lists, and keyword lists. This streamlined organization simplifies data retrieval and utilization for your campaigns.

Galaxies: This feature provides you with a set of playlist of content organized into categories like news, business, finance, IT technology, food and drinks, and so on. 

Pros using Mandala Cosmos

• It offers a cost-effective pricing plan whether for an individual content creator, businesses, or enterprises.  
• The interfaces present with the user-friendly attributes
• With the capability to access diverse social media profiles and posts from multiple channels within a unified dashboard, it streamlines analysis for enhanced efficiency and time savings.

Cons using Mandala Cosmos 

• Occasionally, processing may be delayed in the event of unstable network conditions. 
• If you are on the free trial, there is a limitation on functionalities and features. 

2. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to see how often a search term is entered into Google Search, Google News, and YouTube over a specific period. You can use it to research different industries and topics to see what is currently trending and what is declining in popularity. The tool also shows the top related queries and topics, as well as regional interest.

Let’s take a dive on how Google Trends works: 

Home: The Google Trends homepage is where the platform provides real-time data into the current trending subjects based on the sudden spike and overall search volume.

Explore: At this page you can dive into all the Google Trends data. It’s neatly organized into topics, so you get the lowdown on what’s keeping people curious. And if you’re into specifics, you can throw in individual search terms for some extra insights. More than that, you can also

• Compare terms, limited to 5 terms, at a time
• Compare same terms in different language 
• Read the interest over time and by region/ country
• Top and rising searches
  • Rising: Topics and queries that have spiked in search interest over the chosen time period. 
  • Top: Topics and queries that hit the highest search volume in the chart during the specific time and place. 

Trending Now: The page provide you a listicle of daily search and real-time search trends 

Pros using Google Trends

• The interface comes with a polished and visually pleasing design
• Modifying search parameters is effortless
• Seamlessly navigating between keywords to explore associated terms is user-friendly

Cons using Google Trends

• The comparison chart is confined to a set of 5 keywords
• Constrained scope of related terms
• The search context sometimes vaguely present

3. Treendly

Treendly is an online tool that’s like your personal trend tracker. It helps you keep your finger on the pulse of what’s trending in the world of Google searches. This tool lets you explore and monitor the popularity of different search terms over time.

Treendly operates as a valuable trend tracking tool by harnessing the power of search data.

Here is how Treendly works:

Data Collection: Treendly gathers information from Google Trends, Google News, Google searches, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube, and partnership with e-commerce. This data includes how often specific search terms are being looked up over a period of time.

Trend Analysis: The tool then crunches this data to identify trends. It spots which search terms are on the rise, which are staying steady, and which are losing popularity.

Categorization: Treendly categorizes these trends into different groups or categories. This helps users quickly see what’s trending in various areas like technology, health, entertainment, or even niche hobbies.

Forecasting: By analyzing the historical data, Treendly can also help predict potential future trends. It’s like having a glimpse into what might become the next big thing.

Visual Representation: Treendly presents all this data in user-friendly visualizations. You’ll likely see charts, graphs, and timelines that make it easy to understand the trends at a glance.

Pros using Treendly

• By pulling data from various sources, Treendly offers a comprehensive view of consumer interests and behaviors across different platforms.
• Its e-commerce partnership benefits online retailers by identifying product trends and customer demands.
• It provides neatly categorized data, making it easy to find.
• You can generate weekly and monthly reports, enabling you to make informed decisions regarding content creation, marketing strategies, and product development, aligning your efforts with current consumer preferences.

Cons using Treendly

• It heavily relies on data from specific platforms like Google, Amazon, and social media. If trends emerge from sources not covered by Treendly, you might miss out on valuable insights.
• It offers paid packages, depending on your budget, this expense could be a factor to consider.

4. SparkToro

SparkToro serves as a specialized tool for market and online audience research. It efficiently scans the web and social platforms to identify the sources of influence of your target audience – what they read, listen to, watch, follow, share, and discuss.

How does SparkToro work: 

It is an audience discovery tool. SparkToro aims to help businesses understand their target audience better. It allows users to enter keywords, topics, or even URLs related to their industry. The tool then provides insights into the websites, social accounts, and online sources that their target audience frequently engages with. SparkToro reveal valuable data including:

• Textual insights such as terms in bios and commonly utilized hashtags.
• Demographic details encompassing gender, job, skills, and interests.
• The sources your audience follows, visits, and engages with.
• The content your audience watches, listens to, and reads.

Pros using SparkToro

• You gain access to research that would traditionally demand weeks or months, with a single click of the search button that yields results within seconds.
• The website’s design and layout are not only aesthetically pleasing but also intuitively navigable.
• By understanding where your audience spends time online and what content they engage with, you can fine-tune your content strategy for better resonance.
• The insights provided by SparkToro are data-driven, which can help you make informed decisions and avoid relying solely on assumptions.

Cons using Spark Toro

• The predominant data is centered around US companies; if your brand is situated in Europe, Asia, or other regions, the available information might be insufficient.
• The cost could prove to be quite significant for a small business. Even if you opt for the free plan, there are certain constraints in terms of search capabilities and functionalities.

5. Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is trending tools where efficiency lies in swiftly pinpointing the latest trends, enabling you to capitalize on them before your competitors.

Unlike many other tools, Exploding Topics doesn’t overwhelm with an abundance of features. Its core mission is to deliver trending topics with precision, a task it accomplishes exceptionally well.

How does Exploding Topics work:

The main function of this tool is trend searching, here you only have to fill in the keyword you want to know and apply filters to your search results – time and category. You’ll be presented with pertinent information like search volumes, growth over time, and related topics.

You also have the option to subscribe to their newsletter, which provides you with updates on the most recent trends and other essential insights.

Exploding Topics Pro

With the paid version, you can access to additional features like: 

• Meta Trends: Gain insight into upcoming developments across various sectors including SaaS, finance, health, business, DTC, edtech, CPG, and beyond.
• Trend Search: Utilize the ability to search for and monitor rapidly expanding trends, complete with country-level data.
• Weekly Reports: Access an exclusive premium report featuring numerous high-potential trends, often up to a year ahead of public release.
• Instant Trend Alert: Secure the advantage of being among the first to receive alerts when nascent trends begin to take off. 

Pros using Exploding Topics

• The platform is designed for ease of use, featuring uncomplicated features and functions.
• Each trend undergoes meticulous human analysis prior to inclusion in the Trends Database, ensuring its alignment with the relevant category.

Cons using Exploding Topics 

• The functionalities of the free plan are relatively basic. To access more comprehensive data, a paid subscription is required.

6. Glimpse

The trending tools trusted by big companies like Google, Unilever, Adobe, and more. It examines an extensive range of consumer behavior signals sourced from various online platforms, totaling hundreds of millions, in order to unveil the most crucial and rapidly emerging trends.

Here is how Glimpse work:

Discover: Encompass trends spanning an extensive array of categories, receiving daily updates.

Search Insights: Obtain precise search volume data for any keyword and country, along with growth metrics such as year-over-year and month-over-month changes.

Channel Analysis: Gain insights into the primary channels where consumers engage with specific topics, spanning TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Trend Alerts: Receive real-time search notifications for trending keywords, ensuring you stay informed about shifts in search activity related to your tracked topics.

Trajectory + Projection: Observe the accurate trajectory of a trend, devoid of seasonality and noise, and anticipate next year’s trend with high accuracy.

Pros using Glimpse

• Effortlessly identify trends across multiple platforms without incurring costs.
• It leverages historical Google Search volume data to monitor trend growth status and provides the flexibility to arrange results by either the highest volume or the most rapid growth.

Cons using Glimpse

• Glimpse’s process does not explicitly mention employing human analysts for curating trends within categories. Consequently, you may need to sift through certain less relevant trends to discern the ones of higher quality.

7. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a widely known and used content research and social listening tool. It helps marketers, content creators, and businesses analyze what content is performing well across various online platforms and gain insights into trends, influencers, and audience engagement.

Here are the main features of BuzzSumo:

Content discovery: This is the space where you can delve into trends and gather inspiration for content creation.

Content research: Uncover the most widely favored content within any specific industry, across platforms. 

Find influencer: Find influencers from content that gets massively shared.

Monitoring: Track online activities from various social media platforms.

Chrome extension: Research while you surf the platform to instantly get all the social metrics 

API: Leverage the robust APIs to integrate, automate, build, and enhance your operations.

Pros using BuzzSumo

• An extensive array of tools and dashboards are available to extract specific topic information and delve into trending insights.
• BuzzSumo aids in the identification of influential figures within your industry. This fosters relationship building, influencer engagement, and content amplification.
• The tool enables you to track mentions of specific keywords, brands, or competitors across various social media platforms. This ensures your awareness of ongoing discussions and provides insights into brand sentiment.

Cons using BuzzSumo

• BuzzSumo’s full suite of features can be relatively expensive for smaller businesses or individuals.
• Depending on your subscription level, you might have limitations on the amount of data you can access or the number of searches you can perform.

8. Pinterest Trends

Pinterest Trends is like your go-to tool on Pinterest. It gives you the lowdown on what’s hot and buzzing in searches. Tailored to cater to businesses, marketers, and content creators, it equips them with the ability to grasp the preferences of users. This way, you can make sure your strategies and content match up with what people are looking for.

How Pinterest Trends Help You Find Trends:

Search Trend Insights: Pinterest Trends offers data on how often a specific keyword or search term is being searched for on the platform. It provides information about the search volume and popularity of the term over time.

Keyword Exploration: You can explore related keywords and phrases that are also trending or relevant to the search term you’re interested in. 

Geographical Data: You can narrow down trends by location, enabling you to see what’s trending in specific countries or regions. This is useful for businesses with regional marketing strategies.

Besides, filling the keyword in the search tab, you can discover what’s trending by filters like trend types, period, categories – so called interest on the platform, keywords, age and gender. 

Specifically, one of the trend types provided in the search filter is seasonal trends. The tool highlights trends that are specific to certain seasons, holidays, or events. This helps businesses align their content and promotions with timely trends.

Pros using Pinterest Trends

• The tool highlights seasonal and event-based trends, allowing you to tailor your content to match ongoing holidays, events, and trends.
• Pinterest Trends often presents data visually, making it easier to interpret and act upon. Visualizations like charts and graphs help you quickly grasp the popularity of specific search terms.

Cons using Pinterest Trends

• Pinterest Trends focuses exclusively on the Pinterest platform, so it might not give you a comprehensive view of trends happening on other platforms.
• The categories offered by Pinterest go around a handful of topics like fashion, beauty, home, DIY, etc. If your business covers these areas it is a perfect tool. But if you’re more into, for example, technology, business, politics, Pinterest Trends might not have the juiciest trends for you.

9. TrendWatchers

TrendWatchers is a specialized tool crafted to uncover prevalent trends on TikTok and YouTube. The primary database is searchable by category such as education, beauty, finance, and more, resulting in a compilation of sought-after topics. 

Here is how Trendwatchers works: 

Trend Alerts: Receive notifications about emerging trends within your niche and receive guidance on their practical utilization

Content Creation: Receive suggestions on effectively incorporating the information into your content creation

Content Goes Viral: With strategic effort, your video content has the potential to gain viral traction

Redirect and Upsell: Learn how to leverage this traffic for monetization and online income enhancement

Pros using TrendWatchers

• Discovering fresh trend ideas is a swift process. Simply choose the category, and you’ll access a compilation of keywords that have garnered significant recent searches.
• This tool is designed with the user-friendly features for the video creators.

Cons using TrendWatchers

• Leveraging keyword search volume data from TikTok and YouTube search engines proves invaluable only for YouTube and TikTok content creators.
• Occasionally, the suggested trends may not align well with the intended topic.

10. Feedly

Feedly stands as a popular content aggregator and RSS feed reader, catering to individuals and professionals seeking to remain current with preferred websites, blogs, news sources, and online publications. Its purpose is to enhance the efficiency of collecting and structuring content from diverse origins, consolidating them into a unified platform.

How Feedly works:

Content Aggregation: Feedly allows users to subscribe to websites, blogs, news sources, and online publications by adding their RSS feeds. This enables users to gather content from multiple sources in one unified platform.

Customized Feeds: Users can organize their content into customizable feeds, categorizing topics according to their interests. This makes it easy to navigate and consume content based on specific categories.

Read Later: Feedly offers a “Read Later” feature that allows users to save articles for later reading. This is useful for when you come across interesting content but don’t have the time to read it immediately.

Content Discovery: In addition to following specific sources, Feedly suggests new content based on your interests. This helps users discover fresh perspectives and sources they might not have encountered otherwise.

Pros using Feedly

• As mentioned, Feedly allows you to gather and organize content from various sources in one place, making it easy to stay updated without visiting multiple websites.
• You can create personalized feeds based on your interests and categorize content, making it convenient to find and consume content on specific topics.
• Feedly is available on both web and mobile platforms, allowing you to access your content across devices.

Cons using Feedly

• The search capabilities in the free version might be limited compared to the premium versions.
• Subscribing to too many sources can lead to information overload, making it challenging to keep up with all the content in your feeds.
• In the free version, offline access to content might be limited, which can be a drawback if you want to read content without an internet connection.

11.  Trend Hunter

Trend Hunter is a popular online platform and community focused on trend spotting, innovation, and trend analysis. It’s designed to help individuals, businesses, and creatives discover emerging trends, consumer insights, and innovative ideas across various industries such as tech, life, culture, fashion, etc.

Differing from alternative trending tools, you aren’t able to simply input any term or phrase and access data on that particular keyword. Trend Hunter is better suited as a discovery tool rather than one intended for in-depth analysis of the trending trajectory of a specific keyword.

On Trend Hunter you will discover: 

Trend Spotting: Trend Hunter features articles, reports, and content that highlight trends, consumer behaviors, and innovative ideas. It covers a wide range of topics, from technology and design to marketing and lifestyle.

Trend Reports: Trend Hunter offers trend reports that provide deeper insights into specific trends, backed by data and analysis. 
Inspiration and Idea Generation: For creative professionals and marketers, Trend Hunter can be a source of inspiration and ideas for product development, marketing campaigns, and content creation.

Pros using Trend Hunter

• Content is organized into curated categories, making it easier for users to find trends that are relevant to their specific interests or industries.
• Trend Hunter’s community-driven approach means that a diverse range of trends and innovations are covered, potentially leading to unique insights.

Cons using Trend Hunter

• While Trend Hunter offers free content, access to more in-depth insights and trend reports often requires a subscription or purchase.
• While not ideal for targeted keyword searches, it excels as a tool for discovering trends.

12. Awario

Awario serves as a dedicated social media monitoring and online reputation management solution crafted to assist businesses and individuals in monitoring brand mentions, conversations, and trends. Its scope encompasses brand, product, competitor, and industry-related discussions across diverse online platforms.

On Awario you are able to: 

Trend Exploration: The tool excels in recognizing trends and popular subjects, granting users a window into the current online traction and engagement landscape.

Social Insight: Awario actively scans social media platforms, news sites, blogs, forums, and other online sources, ensuring comprehensive monitoring of specific keywords, phrases, and subjects. This real-time tracking empowers users to remain up-to-date with ongoing discussions.

Competitor Insights: Awario provides the capability to monitor competitors’ digital presence and follow conversations involving them. This strategic feature aids in assessing your market position and uncovering potential avenues for growth.
Influencer Discovery: Awario aids in the identification of influential figures conversing about topics pertinent to your industry. This information can be instrumental in forging partnerships and engaging with key influencers.

Pros using Awario

• You can set up and track specific keywords, phrases, and hashtags that are relevant to your business
• Awario possesses the capability to detect burgeoning trends and prevalent subjects, delivering valuable insights into the current online buzz.
• With feature competitor analysis, it helps you gain insights into their strategies and identify opportunities.

Cons using Awario

• Depending on your needs, Awario’s pricing might be relatively higher compared to other social media monitoring tools, especially for businesses with tighter budgets.
• Some users might find it takes time to fully understand and navigate Awario’s interface and features, particularly if they’re new to social listening tools.

Find and uncover trends ahead of the competition

Keeping up with the latest trends and topics is crucial for social media marketers. It helps you stay relevant and engaging with your audience. Selecting the most suitable tool from the 12 options we’ve outlined in this blog post, you’ll be able to find what’s trending, maintain current with prevailing subjects, and craft audience-engaging content. The moment has arrived to leverage potent tools for elevating your marketing endeavors.