Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting

How to Curate Social Media Trends That Matter

About This Episode:

Rohit Bhargava, Founder of Influential Marketing Group, bestselling author, and keynote speaker, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss the art, science, and impact of trend spotting and idea curation.

Getting Ahead of the Game

Working in social is about staying on top of the latest trends, embracing new technologies, and keeping an eye out for the next big thing. For Rohit, this means ditching the notion of trends altogether and pursuing the curation of ideas.

Instead of chasing trends, it’s all about understanding the thoughts, feelings, and intentions that drive the interest in the latest “it” item. By recognizing the human behavior behind trends, you can identify the non-obvious fads long before they become mainstream. The aim is to achieve such a level of understanding about the current human climate that you can identify the fledgling platforms for the behavior long before they hit the global market.

This is a change from the common practice of stating trends in terms of a thing, such as “[insert social platform here] is the next big thing”. That is simply a statement of a thing that exists, not the human behavior linked to the thing. For Rohit, the behavior is the trend, the item is the vehicle.

In This Episode

  • Why curating ideas sometimes means working in the physical realm
  • Why spotting trends does not mean identifying mainstream products or platforms in use
  • How a weekly email newsletter leads to better self-discipline
  • Why the taking the first step towards identifying trends means putting a stop to losing things
  • Why excelling in the modern social world means professionally celebrating personal individualism
  • How being purposefully unperfect leads to lovable social

 

Quotes From This Episode

“I describe myself often as an idea collector.” —@rohitbhargava

“I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘trend spotting’. There’s idea-spotting.” —@rohitbhargava (highlight to tweet)

“They don’t stop being trends because it’s three or four years later. They just become obvious instead of non-obvious.” —@rohitbhargava

“What is the underlying human behavior behind this that makes it a trend and not just a statement of something that exists?” —@rohitbhargava

“Use exactly the words you want to use and nothing else.” —@rohitbhargava (highlight to tweet)

“Every trend has 25 or 30 different sources behind it.” —@rohitbhargava

“Great trend predictions are never a case of finding a needle in a haystack but rather spending all your time gathering the hay and sticking the needle in the middle of it.” —@rohitbhargava

“We have to get out of ourselves and understand what’s behind these behaviors.” —@rohitbhargava

“We all have this necessity to be more than what we are on our business card.” —@rohitbhargava (highlight to tweet)

“You can come up with something and you can make it meaningful because it’s flawed.” —@rohitbhargava

“Being unperfect or flawed is not the same thing as being broken.” —@rohitbhargava (highlight to tweet)

Resources

 

See you next week!