Social Media
How to increase your reach and engagement with the use of viral audio.
Adobe Express
May 22, 2025
Did you know that Reels featuring trending audio can have 29% greater reach and 42% more engagement compared to content without audio?
Trending audio is a huge and often overlooked aspect of social media content that can massively improve the overall success and reach of your posts. Let's recap all the benefits of choosing the right audio and share how you can discover trending audio.
Trending audio is trending for a reason — because it’s popular and likeable. Therefore, adding a well-loved sound or song to your content makes it stand out more, which helps increase your reach. Not only that, but if a sound is popular, it’s also more recognizable and familiar – which also helps with engagement.
Brands that stay on top — or even ahead — of trends, generally have a bigger and stronger following. Making use of trending audio in your content is a great way to show that you’re in the know of what’s hip and cool, which positively contributes to your brand perception.
Further reading: How to make a sound on TikTok
A song often becomes popular because many people have connected with it. As a result, using it in your social media content adds an extra layer of familiarity that enhances your overall message and evokes an emotional reaction.
Some platforms may be inclined to prioritize content that makes use of trending audio, so the algorithm might serve your audio-enhanced posts to a broader audience beyond your usual followers. Adding trending audio also makes your content more discoverable by those who want to browse similar content with the same audio.
Including trending audio in your content is easy, and it can make a huge difference in how your content and your brand are perceived. What have you got to lose?
Choosing trending audio is fairly simple. While it’s easy to create content and then select a trending audio that pairs well with your post, exploring trending audio from time to time can also serve as great content inspiration in itself.
There’s an “Add sound” option at the top of the screen on TikTok. When selected, you’ll see a menu of audio featuring Recommended, Favorites, and Recent. While Favorites includes the sounds you curate and save over time and the Recent shows you what you’ve heard recently, the Recommended area covers the latest and most popular sounds – you can even see how many times these specific audios have been used already.
When creating an Instagram Reel, the option to add music to your Reel is on the lefthand side of the screen. From here, Instagram gives you a variety of audio options — including a “Trending” menu for you to explore. Like TikTok, you can also see how many times each sound has already been used in a Reel.
Further reading: Your guide to Instagram Reels
If you’re active on social media, you’ll naturally pick up on trending sounds and songs just from a quick scroll through the feed. However, listening to music streaming apps such as Spotify or YouTube Music can also clue you in to what music is popular and help you discover music that is about to be trending.
Ready to create some trending content? Check out our range of video templates in Adobe Express, perfect for crafting your next Instagram Reel or TikTok video.
