Ask Nicole Weekly: Trending Sounds And Your Marketing

I did a terrible job explaining trending sounds to a client the other day, so this is my do-over. We’ll talk about what trending sounds are, how to use them, and how they can increase the size of your audience using the “It’s Corn” sound as both a wholesome and fun example trend from last week.

Much like a large portion of the internet, I’ve been captivated by “It’s Corn” both the kid and the song.

Original Corn Video: August 4 A cute kid tells a reporter in a very cute way why he likes corn. This seems to have been posted to Youtube and TikTok on the same day so here’s the Youtube link to the original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VbZE6YhjKk&ab_channel=RecessTherapy

TikTok artist remixes song: August 18 Proving once again that you can make anything into a song, someone remixes the ‘It’s Corn’ song. https://www.tiktok.com/@schmoyoho/video/7133362838424341803?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7133362838424341803

August 22: I email a client to tell them this corn thing might be a good trend to hop on. At first, everyone is using the ‘It’s Corn’ song in the more predictable sense: cooking their favorite dishes with corn. But then I notice a few people are using it to talk about things they like as much as this kid likes corn so I send an email to one of my clients about it so they can participate in this thing I see as an emerging trend if they want. https://www.instagram.com/p/ChlBbBoLJpk/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Remixed Into A Dance Song: August 28 Ok, you think it’s a cute song, but it won’t be a club banger. Until it becomes a dance song that is… https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=m6IZr6baie8&ab_channel=Phaze-Topic

Streaming: Aug 29 The corn song is added to Spotify approximately 3 days ago: https://open.spotify.com/track/58WiMFVLbAfmS7k4T0qKtG

So what can we learn from ‘Its Corn’ beside the reminder that corn is, indeed, delicious?

1. Anything can be turned into a trending sound (or song).
2. The internet has to embrace it to be reused and remixed.
3. Attaching a trend to a song/sound makes it last a lot longer.
4. These trending songs/sounds make it on actual music streaming services over time.

Here are some more things to know about trending sounds and how to practically implement them as a business in your marketing:

The TikTok sound library is open to all account types. Instagram Reels has a limited library for business accounts (apparently unless you pick ‘Entrepreneur’ as your business type) or make/use ‘Original Audios.’ Note: I have not tried this workaround because I hate playing games with Instagram, but in case you want to: https://www.socialsmarty.co/blog/reels-music (This is one of the reasons why I low-key hate Instagram.) You can’t schedule with sounds in Meta Business Suite. (You have to manually post them.) You can only be logged into 8 Instagram accounts simultaneously in mobile. In third-party scheduling software, we have to manually post Instagram Stories (we can schedule reels), so Stories can be a good way to try trending audio. The only way to schedule stories directly is in the Meta Business Suite planner… but as we established, doing this here, we can’t add sounds/songs.

(Having to pick between a drafting/approval/scheduling process and dynamic features like sounds makes making trending sounds at scale for clients is currently a NIGHTMARE for marketers.) The search function in both TikTok and Instagram has an ‘audio’ section. You can ‘explore’ to see what’s trending… but if you just want to go to a website, this blog seems to be being kept up to date with current trends: https://later.com/blog/instagram-reels-trends/ You can record on Instagram or TikTok and download the draft to edit it on your desktop. You can re-add the sound back in on ‘mute’ when uploading the Reel/TikTok to post. Editing Reels on your desktop (some workarounds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMyAnJ9sWH4&ab_channel=BlueLotusFilms

In short, trending sounds can be difficult to integrate if you’re used to the traditional ways of using social media (drafting, scheduling, etc.). Still, if you have the freedom to use these on the fly and can jump on trends as they are happening, they’re a great way to get more visible on Facebook and Instagram to audiences beyond your followers while also making you seem like a ‘cool’ company.