The growth of social media has been explosive in the last decade and with all this flux of digital networking, it has become a way of life to have these sites set, if not dictate trends. You must have noticed savvy brands keeping up with the trends in their posts and wished you knew a way of anticipating trends that would take off. It is crucial that you understand your customers and their whims before others get the clue and move in. Well, trend monitoring is possible and is easy enough. Paying close attention to the world of social media and the social sentiment online makes trend monitoring possible for everyone.
Social listening for Trend monitoring
Most people are connected to their phones throughout the day. They spend more time with the phone than what they spend seeing billboards and TV commercials. Hence it is only natural that social media platforms have become the new face of sales and marketing. To compete within the social media sphere you have to stay ahead in terms of knowing what people prefer, what is trending and thereby invest time in trend monitoring and in analyzing it further. Trend monitoring opens up a lot many avenues in social media marketing.
Track Trends and Investigate
An easy way would be to log in to Twitter and to simply browse through their trending list. But know that not all trends are important for you. Some trends may seem an amazing fit for your upcoming campaign but before you dive in, think through it. Was it started by a fluke? Who all are talking about it? Will it last long enough for your campaign to completely capitalize on it?
How to separate Useful Trends from the Data Ocean?
With millions of users active on social media round the clock, data is an ocean of uncleaned collection and so it is difficult to browse through everything to pick up the relevant bits. Yet with the help of social listening tools, trend monitoring gets easier.
Sentiment Analysis and Trending Topic Cloud
Extracting the relevant trending topics from within the data ocean can be done using a social listening tool providing the required sentiment analysis and trending topic cloud. The social sentiment is one of the best available metrics for gauging the true popularity of a trending event/topic. This exercise is particularly important because a topic might be trending for all the wrong reasons and you need to steer clear of using such topics in your campaigns or promotional messages et cetera.
Keep watching for Trend Spikes
Not all trends are suitable for your brand all the time but keeping a check on spikes in trends can never hurt. A trend that might not be relevant to your brand message may become so later on. For instance, #tealpumpkinproject has been trending during Halloween for the past couple of years. This was started to offer a solution to families with children having food allergies. The teal pumpkin indicates non-food treats so kids are not offered any candies. In general, not all food brands would likely be tracking #tealpumpkinproject. But candy companies need to explore this trend if they need to keep the sales up in a world where candies with possible allergens aren’t allowed.
Keeping up with trends isn’t a competition but it is good to stay aware when you are managing the social media side of marketing for a brand. We do hope that you possess an arsenal of social analytics tools, which can help you with your quest in trend monitoring.