Wondering whether your brand should jump on the latest social media trend? Here’s how to know when a trend is worth following and when it’s better to say no.
Dear Amelia,
I work in social media for a consumer brand and my boss is obsessed with trends.
Every time something takes off on TikTok or Instagram, it lands in my inbox with some version of: “Should we be doing this?”
Sometimes I agree. But plenty of the time I can’t see any connection to our brand. By the time we’ve shoehorned our product into the trend and got it approved, it feels less clever and more like someone’s dad trying to use teenage slang.
My boss thinks we need to be more reactive. I think jumping on the wrong trends can make a brand look desperate.
The problem is, they’re my boss and I’m the social specialist. How hard should I push back? And how do I know I’m actually right?
Best,
Trend Carefully
Dear Trend Carefully,
This is a problem that quite a few social media folks have shared with me over the years. Your boss, or your boss’s boss, sends you the latest TikTok meme with an enthusiastic “We should do this ”
You look at the meme and think “Oh God. Absolutely not.” But they’re still your boss. And while you’re secretly cringing even at the idea of jumping on this trend...could it actually work?
So, I think your dilemma has two parts:
1. How do you manage the relationship when you disagree with your boss? And,
2. How do you know whether your judgement about the content is actually right?
I can help with the first. For the second, I called someone who’s a proven expert in social media content.
Pick your battles
One thing I’ve observed throughout my career in recruitment is that the more senior people become, the less their success is determined purely by being good at their specialist skill.
As you become more senior, managing relationships becomes a bigger part of the job. You need the people around you to listen to you and trust your judgement. And that definitely includes your boss.
You’ve been hired for your social expertise, so you shouldn’t simply nod along with every suggestion. But nor do you want to become the person who visibly bristles whenever somebody else has an idea about “your” area.
So, before you push back, work out what your boss is actually trying to achieve.
Perhaps their underlying point is perfectly reasonable. Maybe they feel the brand needs to be more culturally relevant. Perhaps they think the social content has become too safe or formulaic, or they want the team to experiment more. Maybe they’re trying to reach a younger audience, they’ve seen competitors getting great engagement from reactive content, or they simply think this particular trend presents an opportunity worth exploring.
In other words, before you decide your boss has had another terrible idea, work out what they’re actually trying to achieve.
If you understand the concern behind the suggestion, you can say: “I agree that some of our content needs to be trend-driven and reactive. I don't think this particular trend is necessarily right for us, but here's what I think we could do instead.”
That's a much easier conversation than “No, that's a terrible idea.”
You don't have to agree with your boss, Trend Carefully. But knowing how to push back without turning a difference of opinion into a battle is a career skill in itself. That’s the relationship part.
But is your judgement about the content actually right?
Of course, there’s one rather large flaw in all my advice so far.
It assumes that you’re right about the content being cringey. Perhaps the trend really is completely wrong for the brand.... or maybe your boss has spotted something you haven’t.
I asked Raman Mahi, Head of Social Media at Farmers, how he sense-checks whether a social trend is actually right for a brand.
Before Farmers, Raman worked across social and brand at Air New Zealand, where his work included launching the airline on TikTok, before moving into a brand role at BNZ. In other words, he’s spent years making exactly the kind of judgement you’re wrestling with.
His first question is beautifully simple:
Why does this trend actually matter for our brand?
Is there a genuine connection to the audience? Does it fit the brand’s personality? Does the brand actually have something worthwhile to contribute?
Raman has a great analogy for the danger of assuming that because something is everywhere in your world, it matters to everyone else.
“There’s a difference between thinking, ‘I’d make a great comedian because I’m genuinely funny and I can make my friends laugh,’ and actually walking onto a stage and making a room full of strangers laugh.”
One’s own personal feed, in other words, isn’t necessarily the brand’s audience.
As Raman puts it:
“Just because something works within your own social bubble doesn’t mean it will work for your audience.”
Raman’s three-part test
When a brand does join a trend, Raman looks for three things: speed, passion and relatability.
Speed matters because trends have a lifecycle. Wait too long and you risk turning up after everybody else has already told the joke.
Passion matters because, if you’re going to do it, you need to fully commit.
“Half-heartedly recreating a trend because you feel like you have to be on TikTok is often more damaging than not participating at all.”
And then there’s relatability.
Why does your brand belong in this conversation? What can it add? Does the joke actually work coming from you?
If the only answer is because everyone else is doing it, that’s probably not enough.
And sometimes, Raman says, the right decision really is to do nothing.
“Sometimes the smartest reactive social decision is knowing when not to post and keeping your eyes and thumbs ready for the next opportunity.”
Which rather suggests that your instinct to leave some trends alone isn’t necessarily you being difficult. It might actually be you doing your job.
But what happens when the idea comes from the boss?
This is where Raman’s answer brings us neatly back to your original problem.
Social teams, he argues, often know their brands exceptionally well because they’re living with the audience every day. They’re reading the comments, watching engagement, monitoring sentiment and seeing first-hand what people respond to and what they don’t.
“If you want to find someone who knows your brand inside and out, it’s often the social media team.”
But Raman doesn’t think that gives the social team licence to simply shut everybody else down. When he thinks a suggestion isn’t right, his approach is to explain why.
And this is where Raman and I arrive at almost exactly the same answer from two completely different directions.
He’s talking about good social-media judgement.
I’m talking about good career judgement.
But both require you to do more than simply say no.
So, what should you do?
Keep challenging the ideas you genuinely think are wrong. That’s part of what you’re being paid for. But don’t confuse being the expert with having the final word.
Listen to what your boss is trying to achieve. Explain why you disagree. Use the evidence you have from your audience. And wherever possible, give them a better idea rather than simply killing theirs.
And every so often, put your ego aside and ask yourself: Could they be right?
Because Raman makes an important distinction:
“Spotting a trend is relatively easy. Knowing whether you should use it, how you should use it, how quickly you can execute it, and whether it will actually achieve something for the brand is much harder.”
Your professional challenge is knowing which trends are right for the brand.
Your career challenge is knowing when to push back, how to push back, and when to admit that the boss’s annoying TikTok might actually be bang on.
Got a question for an upcoming #AskAmelia?
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