What's Trending on Instagram? Brands Want to Know.

Instagram has quickly become one of the primary social channels but brands continue to struggle with maximizing their participation on the network. That may change in the (very near) future as solutions emerge which help marketers find insights into what's trending and which influencers are driving the mos activity.

Predicitive intelligence platform TrendSpottr, for example, has released a new real-time content discovery application that reveals the top trending photos, videos and users on Instagram. Launched in partnership with social media management platform HootSuite, TrendSpottr for Instagram provides a unique and rather meaningful look into content that is capturing the attention of the 'visual' social network's users.

The platform enables brand marketers to see the top trending photos and videos for any tag or topic, discover related hashtags to boost their own social engagement, and identify and engage with influencers in real-time. Users can also like and comment directly from within the application and share directly to their own social following (thanks to the integration with HootSuite. The applicaiton costs $4.99/month for regular HootSuite users but is offered free for users of its Enterprise product.

"With over 300 million monthly users, Instagram has emerged as one of the most important social networks for brands and marketers. Finding signal within the noise of 70 million photos and videos shared each day has become a key challenge for Instagram marketers and users," said Mark Zohar, CEO of TrendSpottr. "TrendSpottr for Instagram helps solve this problem by surfacing the most relevant and trending posts with the highest predicted engagement and viral potential. TrendSpottr for Instagram provides marketers with invaluable insights into relevant trends, viral posts and key influencers to help boost their social marketing strategy and performance."