How to Find Trends on Instagram

Jumping on an Instagram trend at the right time can feel like catching a massive wave - it can carry your content to a much wider audience than your usual posts. The trick is learning how to spot these waves before they crash. This guide breaks down exactly where to look for emerging trends and how you can adapt them for your own brand to drive real growth.

Where to Find Instagram Trends Hiding in Plain Sight

You don't need secret clearance to find trends, many of them are right in front of you. You just need to switch from being a passive scroller to an active observer. Here’s how to do it.

1. The Reels Tab: Your Trend-Spotting Headquarters

The Reels tab is more than just an entertainment feed, it's a living library of what's currently working on Instagram. But mindlessly scrolling won’t cut it. You need a method.

• Look for the Trending Arrow: Instagram now places a small, upward-pointing arrow next to trending audio. This is the platform literally telling you, "Hey, people are using this sound right now!" If you see it, tap the audio and save it immediately for later use.
• Identify Repetitive Sounds &, Audio: Spend 10-15 minutes actively scrolling through Reels. What song or audio clip have you heard three or more times? When you find one, tap on the audio title at the bottom of the Reel. This will take you to the audio page where you can see how many other people have used it. If the number is climbing quickly (e.g., from 5,000 to 15,000 uses in a few days), you’ve found a rising trend.
• Analyze Formats and Visuals: Trends aren't just about audio. Look for recurring editing styles, video formats, or on-screen text hooks. Are people pointing to text bubbles? Doing quick-cut transitions to a beat drop? Staring into the camera for three seconds before lip-syncing a line? These visual patterns are trends, too.

Actionable Step: Dedicate 15 minutes a day to "trend research" on the Reels tab. Don't just watch videos you like, save any audio or note any visual formats you see repeated by different creators in different niches.

2. The Explore Page: A Personalized Trend Report

Instagram's Explore page is an algorithmically curated feed based on your interests and activity. For content creators, it’s a goldmine. The algorithm is designed to show you popular content it thinks you'll like, which often includes trending posts in your niche.

How to Leverage the Explore Page:

First, you need to "train" your algorithm. Make sure you consistently engage with content from accounts in your industry - follow them, like their posts, and save content that inspires you. This tells Instagram what you care about, and your Explore page will start to reflect that.

Once it's tuned in, check the Explore page daily. Look for two things:

1. Niche-Specific Trends: You might not see the huge, mainstream dance challenges here. Instead, you'll see what's trending specifically with your target audience. For example, if you're a coffee enthusiast, you might see a popular "four ways to use a French Press" format that has been adopted by other food and beverage creators.
2. Content with High Engagement: Posts that make it to the Explore page typically have a lot of likes and comments. Analyze them. What's making them so popular? Is it the storytelling in the caption? An unconventional camera angle? A powerful emotional hook? Deconstruct their success to learn what resonates.

3. Following and Analyzing Hashtags

Hashtags are more than just a way to categorize content, they are searchable streams of what people are posting about on specific topics. Following key hashtags in your niche allows trends to come directly to you.

Instead of just following broad tags like #marketing, get more specific. Follow tags like #smallbusinesstips, #contentcreationideas, or #socialmediamanagerlife. When you follow a hashtag, popular posts using that tag will start appearing in your main feed.

Click on these hashtags and toggle between the "Top" and "Recent" tabs. The "Top" tab shows you what a particular community has deemed high-quality content, often revealing popular formats. The "Recent" tab can sometimes give you a very early glimpse of a new idea that’s just starting to bubble up.

Advanced Techniques for Finding Trends Before Everyone Else

If you want to move from trend-follower to trendsetter (or at least an early adopter), you need to look beyond the obvious places. These strategies will give you an edge.

1. Watch What Your Competition and Role Models Are Doing

Make a list of 10-15 accounts in your niche. A mix of direct competitors and larger, aspirational creators. Once a week, specifically visit their profiles and look at their recent Reels and posts.

• What are their highest-performing videos from the last two weeks?
• What audio are they repeatedly using?
• What questions are they answering in their captions or on screen?

The goal isn't to steal their content. The goal is to analyze what works. If you see three different pottery accounts all using the same trending sound to show their glazing process, that’s your signal to adapt that sound for your handmade furniture business.

2. Get Off Instagram to Spot the Next Big Thing

Instagram is rarely where trends begin. More often than not, they are born on other platforms and migrate over. If you want a preview of what's coming to Instagram Reels next week, spend some time on TikTok this week.

The TikTok "For You Page" (FYP) is a powerful trend engine. Sounds, meme formats, and video styles that blow up on TikTok almost invariably make their way to Instagram Reels about one to two weeks later. By spotting a trend early on TikTok, you have time to brainstorm how you'll adapt it for your Instagram audience. You can be one of the first in your niche to use it on Reels, giving you a huge advantage.

Also, don't forget about other cultural sources. Are there major movie releases, viral Super Bowl commercials, or big moments on streaming shows? These events often generate audio clips and memes that become social media trends overnight.

3. Follow Accounts Dedicated to Trend Spotting

Let other people do some of the hard work for you. There are several Instagram accounts dedicated entirely to identifying and sharing trends with creators and marketers. Following them is like getting a daily briefing.

A great place to start is Instagram's own @creators account. They publish a weekly Trends Report and regularly highlight what's working on the platform, what Reels features to try, and which sounds are gaining momentum. Search for other "trend alert" accounts in your niche for even more tailored advice.

How to Jump On a Trend (Without Looking Silly)

Finding a trend is only half the battle. Executing it properly is what makes the difference between cringey content and viral success.

Adapt, Don’t Just Copy

This is the most important rule. Never just replicate a trend beat for beat. The magic happens when you infuse your brand's unique personality, value, and insights into the popular format.

For example, let's say the trend is a lip-sync audio where someone says, "It’s not just a hobby, it’s a cultural reset."

• A bad adaptation: A life coach just pointing at text bubbles saying "My life mission."
• A good adaptation: A thrift store owner showing off a rack of incredible vintage finds they just sourced, with on-screen text that reads "When you find a haul that’s about to change so many wardrobes."

Your goal is to use the trend as a familiar framework to deliver your message in an entertaining way.

Timing Is Everything

Trends have a life cycle: birth, rise, peak, saturation, and decline. The sweet spot is the "rise" phase.

• Too early: Your audience might not understand the reference, and it won't have any momentum.
• Too late: Your audience is already tired of seeing it, and you’ll look out of touch.

So how do you find the sweet spot? A good rule of thumb is to act when you've seen the trend used by a few other creators in your niche, but before you see major mainstream brands or non-savvy relatives using it.

Add Value, Always

Even when you're jumping on a light-hearted trend, your content should still align with your brand's purpose. It should entertain, educate, inspire, or connect with your audience. If a trend completely clashes with your brand's voice or offers zero value to your community, it’s okay to sit that one out. You don't have to participate in every single trend to be successful.

Final Thoughts

Finding trends on Instagram comes down to shifting your mindset from a consumer to a creator - paying close attention to patterns in sound, format, and topics within your industry. By using the on-platform tools and looking at broader cultural signals, you can consistently discover new ways to engage your audience and expand your reach.

Once you’ve found the perfect trend, acting fast is what sets successful accounts apart from the rest. We know it’s frustrating when clunky, outdated software slows you down, which is why we built Postbase to make content creation faster and more intuitive. With a simple visual calendar, you can map out and schedule your on-brand trend content for Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms without the usual headaches, ensuring you can capitalize on momentum while it’s still hot.