The Ins and Outs of Microtrends for Advocacy

Brat summer. Girl dinner. Your Gen Z colleagues’ sudden obsession with the word “demure.” Regardless of how online you are, chances are at least one of these social media trends has crossed your radar — and then faded from the cultural zeitgeist just as the older generations were starting to catch up.

These are all examples of online “microtrends.” As online content becomes shorter than ever, so too do the lifespans of trends and memes, resulting in a culture shaped by microtrends.

The rise of microtrends can be frustrating for organizations, especially advocacy groups, hoping to gain traction on social media. Their fast-moving nature makes them difficult to capitalize on while they’re still relevant. But when advocacy groups do manage to capture the energy of a microtrend, their reach can be substantial.

What Are Microtrends?

Microtrends are social media trends that appeal to a niche audience (usually a young one) and remain relevant for only a short time. Think of them as similar to inside jokes shared by a group of friends — for a few days, everyone in the group is enamored with the joke and references it often. After a while, though, the joke naturally runs its course, and the group moves on to other topics.

Microtrends aren’t always necessarily jokes; they can also be interactive activities (think TikTok dance challenges), topics of conversation, or even quick-moving fashion trends. What they all have in common, though, is that they’re born on social media and have massive reach for a very short time.

Microtrends’ Role in Advocacy

Microtrends can be tricky to adapt to, given their fast-moving nature, but their potential reach (especially among young people) makes the effort worth it.

“Most young people get their news — and many of their opinions — through the filter of their social media algorithms, so there’s is no shying away from the short-form content race in advocacy,” says Kaycie Goral, manager of public affairs at Monument Advocacy.

That means organizations that want to get their message to a broader audience would do well to embrace microtrends. Of course, it is important to understand what microtrends can and cannot do for you. Brian Rubenstein, founder of Rubenstein Impact Group, explains that jumping on a trend “doesn’t increase significantly the engagement of your existing advocacy volunteers.”

“But what it can do is help expand your list and expose more of the organization’s overall volunteer list to advocacy campaigns,” he says. “Using microtrends to be very relevant to that audience is a great way to increase their interest in the advocacy work that’s going on, make the work you’re doing in advocacy seem more relevant to them, and drive them to sign up for communications.”

How to Identify the Right Microtrends to Follow

Many organizations find it challenging to be aware of microtrends, but capitalizing on them requires more than awareness—it also requires understanding the context of each trend so that you can determine which trends are relevant to your organization.

Rubenstein explains that knowing which trends appeal to which demographics is the first step in identifying the best microtrend to jump on. “If an organization is dominated by 60-year-old white women, then a trend on TikTok probably isn’t that relevant to them. Likewise, if they have a very young audience, then a Facebook trend may not be relevant.”

Your brand’s image and values can also play a big role in determining which trends are right for your brand. Faisa Ali, social media lead at Mercy Corps and founder of Peapod Social, cautions that “a standard practice is not to jump on any trends that could offend a population and stay away from curse words. Brand identity and brand awareness are really important, and you don’t want to tie yourself to vulgar language.”

Of course, before you can choose appropriate trends, you must first know what the most current ones are. This requires mastering strategies like social listening and influencer monitoring, and many organizations use software that tracks social media data to ensure they don’t miss anything.

However, because many of these trends are highly nuanced and context-dependent, it’s easy to make missteps when following data alone. That’s why it’s important to trust the advice of dedicated social media experts, according to Ali.

“The social media team is chronically online, even during non-working hours, so they really know the ins and outs and the analytics behind the scenes. So really trust your team to deliver on your mission and your goals.”

Goral also recommends checking in with the young people in your office who consume microtrends regularly. “They’re the oracles—multi-generational linguistic masters who understand the trends, the jokes, and the subtext. Ask them what they think,” she advises.

Tips for Creating Successful Microtrend Content

Once you’ve identified a microtrend to join, you need to move fast to create content for it. It can be helpful to have a repository of existing images, videos, and other media that could be repurposed at a moment’s notice.

That said, plenty of trends will require new media, so your content creation process needs to be flexible. Rubenstein explains that having a degree of flexibility is a best practice for advocacy social media.

“You want a schedule, you want to have a strong narrative built out, but always with a degree of flexibility to adjust to a microtrend or something happening in Congress or a state legislature,” he says. “That way, when something does pop up, you have that flexibility built into your calendar, built into your narrative, so you can very quickly move on it.”

Exactly what you make in response to each trend is highly context-dependent, but Goral explains that understanding the deeper meaning behind a trend, even one that appears lighthearted on the surface, makes it easier for advocates to use it effectively. “Understanding the meaning in the absurdity is half the ballgame when trends are constantly being built upon one another,” she says.

She gives this example, “If you were on TikTok this past summer, you might have come across videos set to the song ‘Symphony,’ featuring photos of dolphins with overlaid text. While it may sound silly, the format often delivered hard truths about existence. For advocacy groups, this trend presented a unique opportunity: share a grievance in a relatable, visually engaging way, and follow it up with a clear policy alternative to fix the issue in the caption.”

Having fun with trends will help an organization’s content stand out. “The most successful organizations that I see on social media are the ones that really have fun with it and treat it like they’re creating a TV channel. People are on their phones more than even watching TV, so entertain folks,” Ali says.

Case Study: Microtrends at Mercy Corps

This past fall, a joke from Broad City, in which a character mispronounces “in the club, we are all family” as “in da clurb, we all fam,” became one of the most used audios on TikTok. Mercy Corps made a simple but effective video with that audio to showcase all the countries the organization works in.

Another example is a recent Mercy Corps TikTok video inspired by Spotify Wrapped. Every year, the music streaming service provides users with data on their listening habits, and sharing this data dominates the online conversation that day. Mercy Corps used the graphics from this year’s Spotify Wrapped to create its own “wrapped” video highlighting the year’s accomplishments.

These videos demonstrate how advocacy organizations can capitalize on microtrends in a way that is easy for them and fun for the viewer, all without straying from their mission.

Make Microtrends Part of Your Advocacy Strategy

Today’s social media trends move so quickly that keeping up can seem overwhelming. But keeping up is not just possible; it’s necessary to reach many demographics. Being flexible, monitoring social channels, and trusting your social media experts can make microtrends a boon to your advocacy organization instead of a burden.