I Tested Our New Trending Topics Feature and Got 54K Views Overnight

Threads has over 150 million daily active users. Great for reaching new audiences. Also, a discovery problem.

How do you get seen when millions of conversations are happening at once?

Enter: Trending Topics for Threads, right in Buffer. It brings real-time trending conversations directly into Buffer’s composer.

Built in partnership with the Threads team, Trending Topics surfaces what’s trending on Threads to anyone, no matter your location, through Buffer’s API access.

The discovery challenge on Threads

The Threads algorithm rewards genuine conversation and authentic engagement. Success comes from joining discussions people actually care about, at the moment they care about them.

The trick is knowing what those discussions are.

What topics are resonating right now? Which conversations have momentum? What should you be talking about to reach new audiences who share your interests?

We built Trending Topics in Buffer to solve this.

When you open Buffer to create a Threads post, trending topics appear right in the composer.

You’ll see what’s trending, browse actual posts from each conversation, and understand the context before you jump in. Then create your post and join a discussion that already has audience attention.

Fun fact: Threads currently only shows trending topics to users in the US and Japan. But through our partnership, we make US trends accessible to everyone, everywhere.

A real example: My quantum physics experiment

Last week, I wanted to test the feature myself. I saw “Quantum physics” trending and thought, “Well, this could be interesting.” I’m no physicist, but I’ve watched enough sci-fi to have opinions. I brainstormed a post with AI that was equal parts curious and tongue-in-cheek, hit send, and went to bed.

I woke up to 54,000 views and 90+ reposts.

The post resonated because it added value to a conversation people wanted to have. That’s the power here. You’re participating in real conversations at the right time.

The whole process took maybe 10 minutes. Saw the trend, brainstormed a relevant angle, wrote the post, scheduled it, done. The next morning: 54,000 views.

It isn’t just me either. Other folks on our team have also experimented with Trending Topics and seen real results. For example, Amanda, our Staff Product Manager, posted her take on The Muppet Show and generated a ton of conversation and 6k views.

The experiment taught me a lot of things (and not just about quantam mechanics).

Relevance matters more than reach. I spent time browsing the quantum physics topic before posting. Some people were just dropping “quantum physics” into random posts. Those got almost no engagement. You can’t just slap anything onto any trending topic. The posts that work best connect the trend to something you genuinely have perspective on.

Timing is everything. Trending topics have momentum curves. Jump in at the right moment and you catch the wave. Trending Topics helps you find that sweet spot.

It amplifies good content. A trending topic won’t save a bad post. But if you have something valuable to say about a topic people care about, Trending Topics helps you reach the audience that wants to hear it.

Trending Topics is the newest addition to our Threads features. Here’s everything you can do with Buffer for Threads:

Schedule your posts so you show up consistently, even when you’re offline. We support every Threads format: text, images, videos, carousels, ghost posts.

Track your performance with analytics that show likes, replies, views, quotes, and reposts. See what’s working, do more of it.

Manage your community from a unified inbox. Reply to comments, keep conversations going, build relationships in a focused workspace.

Use AI to refine your content. Our AI Assistant helps you adjust tone, improve clarity, or try different variations before you post.

Crosspost to other platforms. Create once in Buffer, publish to Threads and everywhere else simultaneously. Or customize for each channel.

Built as an official Threads partner

Buffer is an official Threads partner. We work directly with Meta’s Threads team to build features on official APIs. Our product managers, engineers, and marketers attend Threads API summits. We collaborate on what features make sense and how they should work.