Entrepreneurs are constantly looking out for new ways to move from the now to the next. Social media marketing is one such upcoming marketing tactic being used by every marketer. And for any brand targeting social media marketing, trend spotting can be the ultimate game-changer. However, keeping pace with fast-changing trends can be a daunting task indeed. To level up, constant research and keeping up with the latest trends becomes imperative.
In case trend research is still a concept fairly new to you, do scroll down to know more:
What is Trend Spotting?
The identification of new trends even before they enter the mainstream is called trend spotting. Trend spotting also refers to analyzing the current trends to determine if the trends apply to your business.
Nowadays, we cannot imagine our lives without social media. Pew Research Center’s recent survey portrays that young adults are dedicated users of Snapchat and Instagram. Smart entrepreneurs would use these social media platforms as an essential tool if they were targeting that demographic.
In case you are still doubtful about the relevance of trend spotting, let’s look into some of its features and what it can do.
Edge over Competitors
Trendspotting and analysis help you to gain a competitive edge over others. If you lose out on a particular trend and fail to analyze the customer’s requirements, you may eventually lose out on the competition. For instance, Barnes and Noble were slow to bring out their book reader, and by the time they did, Amazon was ahead, quickly enough to dominate the market.
Helps with Innovations
Trendspotting can help you find innovative ideas. Most famous business leaders have relied on predicting customer demands of the future. And this is no magic. For instance, Bill Gates was the first person to realize that people will need computers in their homes. He also thought that the internet could be the most crucial resource for everyone. Such powerful insights can only be discovered if you invest in understanding your customers and market.
And to achieve success for your business, you need to predict the future needs of people. Social media listening and trend spotting can help you to identify any gaps in the market and future opportunities.
Strategies for Trend Spotting
Let’s take a sneak peek into the various strategies that can help you find the right trends and then help you capitalize on them.
Utilize Social Listening
Utilize social media listening to spot the popular keywords and terms that are a hit with your audience. Social listening tools use an AI-based algorithm to comb through every mention of your brand or industry-related keyword. The algorithm then analyzes the trending keywords, the sentiment around them, the demography of the audience, etc.
By gaining knowledge about your customers’ positive and negative sentiments, you can improve your campaigns or personalize the content in accordance.
Regular Feedback
Getting feedback will help you know about customer-specific trends. Try to find out your users’ preferences and check out the top-selling products to do future promotions effectively. You can initiate polls or closed-ended questions for your clients to know more about their likes and dislikes.
Social listening to your brand mentions also brings out any negative feedback. The analysis along with it can help you track if it is a trend. For instance, you keep repeatedly getting customer service complaints, especially during the monsoon months. You can find a trend here and start looking for a root cause.
Social Media Metrics
Check out your social media metrics to find your trending content. This comes in handy when you are looking at your market share, SOE, SOV as compared to your competitors. If they are doing better, try to analyze their strategy. You could also track their mentions to find out what content/campaign they are putting out.
Study Industry-specific Keywords
Almost every industry is awash with the competition. You can utilize trend spotting on social media to find out what your competitors are doing to drive engagements. Emulating the best practices can take your business to new heights.
In fact, Auris helps you track industry-specific keywords to keep track of all the trends within your industry and what your competitors are doing. It lets you spy on your competitors to find out what they are doing to engage their audiences or what kind of campaigns they are running. This information will help you to elbow out the competition. You need to understand the qualitative and quantitative aspects of trend spotting to boost conversions.