The Trending Trap: Why Borrowing Someone Else's Moment Rarely Builds Your Own

I want to talk about trends. Not in the way that most online advice does — not the "here's how to use them to your advantage" version — but the honest version. The one that includes what happens when you chase them without the foundation to carry them, and why that quick hit of visibility can quietly cost you more than it gives.

We have all seen it. A reel goes viral. A sound takes over. A particular style of post appears to be working for everyone, everywhere, all at once. And the instinct to reach for it is entirely understandable. When you are building something and the traction feels slow, anything that promises a faster route to being seen is going to be tempting. So you adapt the trend. You fit your offer into the format, your message into the mould, and you post it. And sometimes, it works. The numbers move. The reach spikes. For a moment, it feels like something has shifted.

But here is what often happens next, and what very few people talk about openly.

The audience that found you through that moment of visibility was not necessarily looking for what you actually do. They were drawn in by the format, the sound, the familiar shape of something they had already seen and enjoyed elsewhere. They engaged with the trend. Not with you. And because social media algorithms are, at their core, behavioural systems — constantly reading signals about who is interested in what and serving content accordingly — that spike of engagement from the wrong audience does not disappear quietly. It teaches the algorithm something inaccurate about who you are for.

I experienced this directly on Instagram. Within a short space of time I had attracted well over two thousand followers, and on the surface that looked like progress. But when I looked more carefully at who those followers actually were, the picture was less encouraging. The majority were established digital marketers — peers, in other words, rather than potential customers. People who already had what I was offering, had no need for it, or were simply in the same space and had engaged briefly before moving on. My reach had grown, but my reach had also become considerably less useful. The posts that followed performed poorly, not because they were weaker, but because the audience now attached to my account was not the audience I had built it to serve.

That is the part of the trend conversation that tends to get left out. The follower count goes up and it looks like success. What it can actually represent, if the growth was driven by content that did not accurately reflect your positioning, is a signal problem — a growing gap between who your account now appears to be for and who it was always actually meant to reach.

The reason any trend works for the person who originated it is almost never the trend itself. It is the positioning that was already in place before they ever pressed publish. When someone with a clearly defined audience, a well-established message, and an offer their followers understand jumps on a trending format, the algorithm already knows enough about that account to put the content in front of the right people. The trend amplifies something that was already working. It is not doing the foundational work. It is sitting on top of it.

Replicating the format without that foundation underneath it is a fundamentally different exercise, even if the content looks identical on the surface. And for founders who are still finding their footing — still clarifying what they offer, who it is for, and what their presence is genuinely trying to communicate — trend-chasing carries a risk that is rarely acknowledged. It can flood your account with the wrong signals at precisely the moment when the algorithm is still learning who you are. Once those signals are established, you are working against them with every subsequent post.

This is not a reason to never engage with trends at all. Context matters, and there are moments when a well-chosen trend genuinely fits. But the question worth asking before reaching for one is not "is this working for other people?" — it is "does this accurately represent what I do and who I serve?" If the honest answer is no, then whatever visibility it generates is working against your clarity, not for it. A thousand new followers who are not your people is not growth. It is noise with a number attached.

The slower, less exciting alternative — showing up consistently with content that is genuinely aligned with your message, your offer, and your audience — does not produce the same kind of immediate spike. It rarely goes anywhere near viral. But it builds something the algorithm can actually work with. It tells a coherent story over time. And the audience it attracts, even if it arrives more gradually, is one that was looking for exactly what you have.

That is the audience worth building. Not the biggest one. The right one.

If you are at a stage where you are still working out what that message looks like, or how to hold it consistently enough that it begins to do real work for you, that conversation is very much alive inside the community. Come and find us there. (Click here to be directed to the community)