How to Make Valuable Content Out of Trending News

Amy Cowen

May 10, 2016

Why Use Trending News?

Staying relevant, content-wise, on the Internet today is very important. Answering audience questions is a must and the bulk of your content has to be informative, unique, and niche related – otherwise, you will get sidestepped completely.

But, however you spin it, there is only so much you can write in any given month. If all that your content does is talk about your business and your products, people will quickly get bored of you.

Enter trending news. These are content creators bread and butter. The internet is cluttered with articles, posts, videos, pictures, and a whole bunch of other types of content. Mostly, it is all fluff and filler content, worthless for republishing – if not downright damaging.

But every day, you will find dozens of stories floating to the top, being picked up by social media outlets or readers themselves. Also, there are a lot of those that are bubbling near the surface – they have the potential of going viral and becoming truly trending if spun the right way.

Your job is to find that trending information and to adapt it to your needs. A lot of content marketers make the mistake of assuming that trending information has to be closely connected to their business or industry in order for it to be worth picking up.

It really doesn’t. What it has to be is a close match to your target audience interests. Trending articles, posts, and news can always be reworked and you can add your mark on them – but most of the time you don’t even have to.

Also, republishing and curating is not the only approach here. You can take a hint from trending content and use it to see what the audiences are consuming in real time. Then it’s a simple matter of recreating that type of content using similar topics.

What you have to do is:

Always stay on top of things. Follow the news and study the Internet on a daily basis. You never know when a small gem worthy of your attention might crop up.

Be very meticulous about what you choose to share with your audience. Pick content that will have a good amount of traction with them or give it a personal touch that will make it relevant and unique.

If possible, try to add value to content. Expanding on it or reworking it so it fits your niche is always a good idea.

List of Tools You Can Use:

Monitoring trending content is a lot easier than it used to be. It still requires you to do some legwork but, luckily, there are tools you can use that will alert you when something of interest shows up that you might be able to use.

Buzzsumo – This is a top notch online platform that allows you to gauge which types of content have fared well in the past year. You can specify your search by topic and once you enter a keyword you will be served most popular content that you can model yours after.
Facebook Trending – If you want to know what people are talking about right now – at least those on Facebook – then their Trending tool is a perfect thing to use. It is a small sidebar of the side of your page that serves up content that is currently hot and getting a lot of shares and likes. It offers a great window into what people are discussing in real time.
Google Trends – Billions of people use Google to search the Web and the number of daily searches is truly astounding. This gives Google a great opportunity to know exactly what is going on right now and where. Their Google Trends tool allows you to see if there is a particular seasonality for a search term.
Newswhip – Touted as the next hot thing for marketers and content creators, Newswhip is a great tool that curates over 100, 000 links in a single day. You can check changes and take a look at how fast and how often certain topics trend on the Internet.
AussieWriter – After you’ve aggregated trending topics, it might be a good idea to reach out to a professional content creating agency as they can spin it to suit your purposes. AussieWriter is a team of dedicated professional that create excellent content in a timely manner.
Reddit – Most viral memes originate on Reddit and a lot of marketers go to it in search of popular items. Posts are up voted or down voted so the most popular content always floats to the top, making it easy to find.

Serving your audience with trending content that ties in well with your business is a great way to stay fresh and to build a better relationship with them. The point here is to not allow yourself to get boring. Trending content gives you a great opportunity to see what people are sharing and to adapt your writing to that.

Image: Copyright: ‘http://www.123rf.com/profile_enterline‘ / 123RF Stock Photo

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Amy Cowen

Amy Cowen is a content marketing strategist who specializes in maximizing the commercial impact of the content. She manages her own team of content writers at paper writing services and contributes to different sites and blogs on marketing topics. Feel free to contact her at Fb.