How to Find Emerging Trends in TikTok Insights

Jumping on a TikTok trend at the right moment can feel like catching a rocket ship to viral success, but finding those trends before they peak can feel like searching for a needle in a digital haystack. You don't have to rely on guesswork or endless scrolling. This guide will show you exactly how to use TikTok’s own analytics, known as Insights, to spot emerging trends tailored specifically for your audience.

Why Bother with TikTok Insights for Trend Spotting?

Your "For You" Page is personalized, but your TikTok Insights are hyper-specific to your account and your followers. Analyzing this data does more than just show you what worked in the past, it gives you a roadmap for what will likely work in the future. Instead of just copying what everyone else is doing, you can uncover patterns in sounds, formats, and topics that uniquely resonate with the people you’re trying to reach. Mastering your insights turns trend-hopping from a game of chance into a calculated strategy for consistent growth and engagement.

Before you can get started, you'll need a Business or Creator Account to access the analytics tools. If you’re still on a Personal Account, it's a quick, free switch:

• Go to your profile page and tap the three lines in the top-right corner to open Settings and privacy.
• Tap Account.
• Select Switch to Business Account or Creator Account. Creator accounts are generally better for individuals/influencers, while Business accounts offer more commercial features. Both provide analytics access.

Once you’re set up, you can find your insights by navigating to Settings and privacy >,, Creator tools >,, Analytics.

Start with Active Research: Your ‘For You’ Feed

While not a part of your analytics dashboard, your 'For You' Page (FYP) is your first and most important research tool. Your Insights will tell you what’s working with your current audience, but your FYP will tell you what’s getting traction across the platform right now. You need a mix of both.

Spend about 15-20 minutes a day actively scrolling, but don’t just consume - investigate. Look for patterns:

• Recurring Sounds: Do you hear the same audio clip, song snippet, or voiceover used in different ways by different creators? If you hear a sound three or more times in a short scrolling session, tap on the sound. See how many videos have used it. Is the number climbing rapidly? That's a strong indicator of an emerging trend.
• Repeated Formats or Effects: Is everyone using a specific green screen effect, a creative transition, or a certain CapCut template? Pay attention to visual styles that start popping up over and over again.
• Consistent Themes or Challenges: Are multiple videos following a specific prompt, like a "get ready with me" storytime, a business owner sharing a "POV," or a specific dance challenge?

The goal isn't just to see these trends but to think about how you can adapt them to your niche. This active daily research gives you context for the data you’re about to look at in your professional dashboard.

Drilling Down: Using Your TikTok Insights for Trend Clues

Your Analytics dashboard is split into three main tabs: Overview, Content, and Followers. All three contain valuable clues, but the Content tab is where you’ll spend most of your time hunting for trend data.

1. Analyze Your Best-Performing Videos in the ‘Content’ Tab

This is your treasure map. The Content tab shows you your video performance over the last 7, 28, or 60 days. Switch the view to the last 28 days to get a good dataset and then look at your top 6-9 videos with the most views.

Click on each individual high-performing video to bring up its specific analytics and ask yourself these questions:

• What Sound Did It Use? Was it a trending sound that other people were also using, or was it original audio? If it was a trending sound, that’s a clear signal your audience responds well when you participate in wider platform trends. If your top videos consistently use similar types of sounds (e.g., upbeat pop songs, lo-fi study beats), that's a clue about your audience's taste.
• What Format Was the Video? Was it a talking head video? A stitch or duet with another creator? A skit? A product demo? A screen recording? Look for patterns in the format itself. If three of your top five videos are simple "point at text on screen" formats, that’s a clear sign you should do more of those.
• What Were the Video Views by Source? Under the Performance tab of an individual video, check the "Video Views by Source" section. A high percentage (over 50%) from the "For You" feed means your video effectively captured the algorithm's attention. This often happens when the video aligns with a popular theme, sound, or format.

By comparing the guts of your best videos, you'll start to see a formula emerge. You're not looking for a single trend, but for the types of trends that work specifically for you.

2. Check Follower Activity in the ‘Followers’ Tab

Understanding who your audience is can help you predict which trends will resonate with them. Go to the "Followers" tab and scroll down to "Follower activity." You'll see the hours and days your followers are most active.

How does this relate to trends? Let's say you discover your followers are most active between 7 PM and 10 PM. This insight helps you time an emerging trend perfectly. If you spot a new trend early in the morning, you have all day to create your version and post it right when your audience is most likely to be scrolling. Posting in peak hours gives your content the best possible initial boost to piggyback on the trend's momentum.

Furthermore, understanding your audience demographics (age, gender, location) provided in this tab can guide your trend selection. A trend that's going viral among Gen Z in the UK might not hit the same way with a Millennial audience in the US.

3. Use Live Analytics to Catch Real-Time Shifts

Scroll down to the bottom of the "Overview" tab to find insights on your LIVE videos (if that’s part of your strategy). While LIVE video trends are different from feed video trends, the data here can be useful. What topics in your past live sessions generated the most viewers and diamonds (direct feedback on valuable content)? You can take these popular LIVE topics and adapt them into short-form videos to ride the wave of interest you've already confirmed your audience has.

Expanding Your Search Beyond Your Own Analytics

Your analytics are your home base, but you need to survey the wider landscape to find trends before they are everywhere. TikTok provides a free, powerful tool to help you do just that.

Go to the TikTok Creative Center

The TikTok Creative Center is an official resource built for marketers and creators, and its Trend Discovery feature is an incredible asset. You can find it by searching "TikTok Creative Center" on Google.

Inside, you can filter by region and industry and see what’s trending right now:

• Songs: It shows you which songs are breaking out, not just the ones that are already at peak popularity. You can see a graph of a song's usage over time and decide whether to jump on now or wait.
• Hashtags: This is more than just a list of popular tags. It helps you see which hashtags are truly gaining momentum and are relevant to specific interests. Use this to find niche tags on the rise.
• Videos: It showcases top-performing videos in your region, giving you immediate examples of what hooks, formats, and editing styles are capturing attention at a high level. Analyze these for inspiration.

Set a weekly reminder to spend 15 minutes in the Creative Center. It’s one of the best ways to get ahead of the curve and spot a trend in its infancy.

Final Thoughts

Finding emerging trends on TikTok is a blend of science and art. It involves actively observing your 'For You' Page, diving deep into your own performance data, understanding your audience through analytics, and leveraging external resources like the Creative Center. By building these habits, you move from reactively trend-jumping to proactively spotting opportunities that lead to meaningful growth.

Of course, once you’ve identified a week’s worth of trending sounds and content ideas, the next challenge is actually planning, scheduling, and posting them consistently. That’s why we built Postbase from the ground up to support modern, short-form video workflows. Since our visual content calendar is designed for today's social reality, you can easily plan your TikToks and Reels weeks ahead, see everything in one place, and trust that your content will publish reliably, keeping you on top of trends without the stress.

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