Stop Chasing Trends. Do This Instead!

Marketing Shenanigans (#032)

The worst social media strategy you can have is chasing trends. Here’s why it’s hurting your brand—and what you should do instead.

Why Trend-Chasing is a Trap

Trends exist for one reason: to get people to use social media platforms. They’re designed to drive engagement, not build your brand.

When you go viral for hopping on a trend, here’s what usually happens:

• You get a spike in traffic (exciting!).

• But... most of that traffic has no idea who you are or what you do.

And here’s the kicker: If you’re running landing page or website tests, that unqualified traffic can totally skew your results. Suddenly, it’s hard to tell what’s actually working and what isn’t.

What To Do Instead

Focus on content that connects to your mission.

If you can work a trending sound, dance, or skit into your messaging—great. But most of the time, stick to content that:

👨🏻‍🏫 Teaches something.

😆 Makes people laugh or cry (create an emotion).

🤹🏼‍♂️ Entertains in a meaningful way.

When your content has real substance, your reach might grow slower at first. But here’s the upside:

• You’ll train the algorithm to find audiences that actually resonate with your brand.

• It’ll filter out the people who don’t care—and leave you with a more active, engaged audience.

That’s way more valuable than one viral video.

Want to Accelerate Your Reach?

Spend time researching your competitors’ SEO landscape.

When someone takes the time to type a question into a search bar, they’re already interested in the answer. And they’ll give you at least 3–5 seconds to prove your value—far better odds than chasing the latest TikTok trend.

Stay bold, Teddy

Teddy Giard

In case you don’t already know, my name is Teddy, and I operate a firm that specializes in marketing strategies for outdoor brands. Our approach is simple: align your product development timeline with your marketing production timeline; by doing so, we can own the distribution of our message and our products.

If you’d like to explore working together, feel free to fill out this form, and if we’re a good fit, we can schedule a discovery call. We ask this because we keep a fairly narrow target for whom we work, and we like to be as open about that on the front end as possible. After all, time is life’s most valuable resource.