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Can a joke sell? In our quick poll of 119 people on LinkedIn and Instagram, 61% admitted a brand’s humor pushed them to try or buy something. Another 17% said maybe. Only 14% said no, and 8% couldn’t remember. That’s nearly 8 out of 10 people open to being converted...
Oct 1, 2025
Content creation can be the key to connecting with your target audience and driving conversions. If you’re a content manager or strategist, you already know this. The problem is, your audience has a near-constant stream of content in their faces. If your content does not stand out, you’ve got little or no chance of making any impact.
But what if you could design a content calendar that gets ahead of the curve with content that is guaranteed to go viral? And what if we said you don’t need to be Nostradamus to pull this off?
In this article, I’ll show how to design a content planning framework that allows you to predict viral trends and jump on them way ahead of your competition.
You’ll also discover the tools and systems to spot rising trends early, turn past wins into reusable templates, and strike the right balance between planned evergreen content and timely, trend-driven posts. Ready? Let’s dive in!
The safest way to predict what your audience wants to consume is simply to listen. If you have a large enough audience, you could ask them using surveys and other direct market research methods.
But thanks to some incredible advances in technology, you don’t even have to go down this typically costly and time-consuming route. The first place we’d suggest looking is Google Trends.
Log on to the site and navigate to the Trending Now section to find the things people are talking about long before these trends may turn viral.
The TikTok Creative Center is another great source of trending audio and themes for your video content. You can also check Reddit’s r/popular community to catch crowd-driven momentum before it spreads.
Some other great potential sources of emerging trends include X, Glimpse, SparkToro, and so on. As you go trend hunting, one thing to keep in mind is the fact that not every trend will go viral, but if you pay enough attention, early enough, you’ll certainly catch some that will.
Solid keyword research using a powerful keyword tool will do more than just show you some popular keywords to target. It will also show you emerging content gaps, undervalued queries, and promising long-tails that no one’s capitalizing on yet. These can be gold for your content calendar.
When you’ve built up a list of interesting keywords, you can develop topics that align with them. To go viral, your approach needs to be intentional and strategic. The key to turning keyword research into viral content is accurately predicting the search intent behind those keywords.
Typically, search intent for any keyword can be found by doing a Google search for that keyword and analysing the listings that pop up on the first page of search results. But in this case, since you’ll be targeting early-stage keywords, this approach might not be reliable.
One way to work around this is to check forums like Quora, Reddit, or social media groups on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to see what people are saying about the topic in general.
You’ll have to become comfortable with some degree of uncertainty when trying to predict future viral trends, but with this approach, you’ll have a much better chance of striking gold.
To predict what content will perform well, analyze past posts that gained traction. Review your own or competitors’ content to identify effective elements like format, tone, visuals, posting time, and audience engagement. If you’re looking to go viral on Instagram, for example, these Instagram reels would be an excellent place to get started.
As you proceed with your analysis of past viral content, there’ll be several factors to take into consideration:
Was the content informational, educational, or entertaining? The same message can be passed in different ways, but the manner in which it’s passed can greatly impact its reach.
What content types have gone viral already? Videos tend to be the lead contenders, but other content types can also go viral.
Consider societal or seasonal factors that influence engagement. For example, content that goes viral during holidays might not perform the same at other times.
Whatever you find, document what works and call them virality templates. You can reuse or modify these templates as the case may demand, to match any emerging trends.
Trends can emerge and fade quickly, so your content strategy must stay flexible. Allocate resources for timely, trend-driven content alongside evergreen material to capitalize on emerging opportunities without sacrificing long-term growth.
I recommend adopting a 60/30/10 model that works this way:
This approach will allow you to plan 60% of your content months ahead, and get it out of the way, while leaving some space for medium and short-term content planning.
If you don’t have a large team, you’ll likely need some help executing all of this. Partnering with a virtual assistant agency can free your team from busywork like manually updating calendars and creating first drafts, and we’d strongly recommend working with one.
To effectively manage your 60/30/10 model, a tool like Planable can make all the difference. With its intuitive drag-and-drop calendar and collaboration features, your team can quickly shuffle and approve content based on emerging trends without missing a beat. This flexibility ensures your calendar stays responsive without chaos.
With the tips we’ve shared so far, you’ll be very well placed to predict viral trends and get ahead of them with effective content creation. The final piece of the puzzle is putting it all together in a predictive workflow that runs itself:
But for a more integrated approach that combines scheduling, team feedback, and client approval in one place, Planable offers a powerful solution. It centralizes your content assets and conversations, making it easier to move viral content from ideation to publication smoothly.
As your content gains traction, it’ll be natural for the backend demands (like comments, inquiries, or tech questions) to spike. These questions and feedback can also be a great source of direction on emerging trends since they’ll show you the issues your audience really cares about.
But traction can create stress on your customer care systems, especially for smaller marketing teams. To keep your core content team performing at optimal levels, it might be wise to hand this over to white label support solutions that will handle it behind the scenes, allowing for optimal focus.
Planning and predicting viral trends is only half the battle, execution matters just as much. This is where Planable shines as a collaborative content planning and approval platform designed to keep your team aligned and your calendar agile.
Key features:
In fast-moving content environments, where trends appear and vanish overnight, Planable empowers teams to be nimble and reactive, so you can strike while the viral iron is hot.
With the right systems, you can stop playing catch-up and start leading the conversation. Whether you’re a one-person marketing army or you lead an enterprise team of twenty, predictive planning using the tips we’ve shared will help you get ahead of trends and beat out your competition with relevant viral content. For more tips on planning viral content, we recommend reading our guide to going viral on TikTok.
If you’re ready to take your content calendar to the next level, start your free trial today. No credit card required!
Chief Marketing Officer at Event Tickets Center. Oversees all marketing efforts, including paid search, social media, affiliate marketing, and email campaigns. He builds and scales paid media campaigns for growth and retention, leveraging machine learning models and predictive analytics for marketing activations and analysis. Ben has spoken at industry events such as the Coalition for Ticket Fairness Annual Conference.
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