Track emerging trends across social platforms

This skill discovers and tracks emerging trends by extracting data from multiple platforms using Apify Actors, following the same five-step pattern as its sibling skills: identify the trend type and select an Actor, fetch that Actor's live input schema through the mcpc CLI, ask the user for an output format and result count, run the analysis script, and summarize the findings. The Actor catalog covers Google Trends search data (apify/google-trends-scraper), Instagram hashtag content and performance stats (apify/instagram-hashtag-scraper, apify/instagram-hashtag-stats), Instagram post, search, comprehensive, API-based, and comment-export tracking (apify/instagram-post-scraper, apify/instagram-search-scraper, apify/instagram-scraper, apify/instagram-api-scraper, apify/export-instagram-comments-posts), Facebook marketplace product trends, photo trends, and group monitoring (apify/facebook-marketplace-scraper, apify/facebook-photos-scraper, apify/facebook-groups-scraper), YouTube Shorts and hashtag-video trends (streamers/youtube-shorts-scraper, streamers/youtube-video-scraper-by-hashtag), and a cluster of TikTok Actors for hashtags, trending sounds, ads, the Discover page, Explore trends, and viral content (clockworks/tiktok-hashtag-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-sound-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-ads-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-discover-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-explore-scraper, clockworks/tiktok-trends-scraper). Once an Actor is chosen, the skill fetches its live schema and README through mcpc so the run uses the Actor's real, current inputs and outputs.

Use this skill when the task is to discover or track emerging trends - search trends, hashtag performance, trending audio, viral content, or marketplace product trends - across Google, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok. It is not the right tool for pulling a single competitor's or brand's own metrics in isolation - that work belongs to the sibling competitor-intelligence and brand-reputation-monitoring skills built for those jobs. Per the skill's stated limitations, it should be used only when the task clearly matches the scope described, its output is not a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review, and the workflow calls for stopping to ask for clarification when required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.

Running the skill requires an .env file with APIFY_TOKEN, Node.js 20.6 or newer for native --env-file support, and the mcpc CLI installed via npm install -g @apify/mcpc. The chosen Actor's schema and details come from:

export $(grep APIFY_TOKEN .env | xargs) && mcpc --json mcp.apify.com --header "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_TOKEN" tools-call fetch-actor-details actor:="ACTOR_ID" | jq -r ".content"

which returns the Actor's description and README plus its required and optional input parameters and available output fields. The user then picks an output format - a quick in-chat answer, a full CSV export, or a full JSON export - and a result count sized to the use case. The analysis runs through run_actor.js with the chosen --actor and --input, adding --output and --format for file exports. The closing step reports the number of results found, the output file's location and name, key trend insights, and suggested next steps such as deeper analysis or content opportunities.

The skill runs on the Apify platform through Apify Actors and the mcpc MCP client, with credentials loaded from .env. Documented error handling covers a missing APIFY_TOKEN, a missing mcpc install, a misspelled Actor ID, a failed run pointing to the Apify console link in the error output, and timeouts, which it suggests fixing by reducing input size or raising --timeout.

Content strategists, social media managers, and marketing researchers who need a repeatable way to spot emerging search terms, hashtags, sounds, or viral content across Google, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok without hand-building a separate Actor call for each platform.