Marketers are always on the lookout for new things, but the content comes quickly and goes fast. Finding out what’s out of the box or a trend to follow is not easy, and it feels like a gamble. However, predicting trends is not necessarily impossible. This article will provide simple steps for you to discover trendspotting and capitalize on industry trends before they explode. So what is trendspotting? How to build hot-trend content with Trendspotting.
What is Trendspotting?
To understand what Trendspotting is, you first need to understand what creates a “Trend”. According to Investopedia: “Trend or trend is the general direction of the market in a specified period of time. Although there is no specific time period for a market direction to be considered a trend, the longer the direction is maintained, the more noticeable the trend is. ”
Put simply, trendspotting is the identification of new trends. More broadly, trendspotting helps identify trends at the local, regional or global level, understand them, identify innovative methods and opportunities related to these trends.
Trendspotting is a crossroads of market and culture. This understanding helps brands better understand what the mass market wants in the coming years, of course, this not only creates and enhances culture but also helps business. Because trendspotting is a form of market research that investigates past, present, and future consumer trends to support business activities.
What types of trends should marketers watch for?
Trends can be divided into three categories: short term, medium-term, and long term. But regardless of their long or short life, all trends have the same thing: change. Trends are always changing, one that is hot at the moment can disappear or be replaced by another. Here are 3 important types of trends that you should follow to support your business’s social content building strategy.
Social media trends
Social networking is not only a place where consumers but also businesses of all types and sizes operate. If you want an idea of what’s trending and popular in your community, look no further than your feed.
Some ways to identify ongoing trends on social media include:
- The types of content people share and engage with the most
- What social platforms and marketing channels are growing (or shrinking)
- Types of advertisements with which consumers engage
- Upcoming products, brand posts, and influencers
Here are some recent social trends from the Sprout Social Index. These insights are important not only for companies looking to refine their social strategies, but also to help you understand which trends are likely to develop in the future.
Industry-specific trends
In addition to general trends, each industry has its own unique marketing trends.
For example, despite being in the gaming industry, the marketing strategies for SaaS business are completely different from other companies in the industry.
If you want to find a more understandable example of companies applying trendspotting to their activities, look no further than the beauty industry.
In a highly competitive and socially savvy industry like the beauty industry, beauty brands must constantly change to stay on top when joining new, innovative platforms. new content and type of advertisement. While some brands have yet to step into Instagram Reels or even TikTok, brands like Pravana have led the latest beauty trends on these social media platforms.
Competitive analysis by tracking how your competitors attract consumers to accurately identify existing trends in the industry.
Answer the questions yourself: What kinds of campaigns are they running? How does their growth compare to yours? This helps spot trends both qualitatively and quantitatively when you look at both audience conversation and engagement metrics.
Customer-specific trends
Customer trends are important because they impact your customers directly.
For example, tracking feedback, reviews, and bestselling products will tell you about trends that could affect future promotions. Or make it easy to identify which products users like and to get rid of the ones they don’t like.
How to identify a trend?
Adopting a new social platform or running a new campaign, always requires a good investment but there is always a certain risk associated with any given trend.
What is another advantage of trendspotting? it is seen as the ability to do a series of cost-benefit analysis to ensure that the campaign you are working on is profitable.
Again, chasing any trend needs to be derived from data and analysis, not by subjective feeling or just trying to jump into a hot trend.
5 useful ways to catch up on-trend thanks to trendspotting
Trendspotting is a skill that you can hone and develop over time. Becoming a top trendspotter is not too difficult to do. Here are 5 steps to help you do that.
Regularly connect and chat with customers
Regular conversations with customers can help you not only know what they want and expect from you, but also what types of features and products they are interested in general.
You must read the posts or comments carefully when identifying customer trends. Social media is the perfect place to get to know a customer without doing a survey or questionnaire.
Of course, there’s no denying the benefits of polls, product recommendations, and open/closed questions in sparking conversations between customers to find out what they really care about. mind, desire.
But it’s important to put conversations with customers in context. Questions, comments, and issues of interest can be used on the brand’s social media.
Set up social listening for the keywords and hashtags in the industry
Social listening plays an important role in monitoring and monitoring user discussions about brands on social media. Thanks to it, you can identify trends that are developing across the industry by listening to the conversations of both your customers and competitors.
For example, you can use social listening to find out the most commonly used keywords or terms used by your target audience. Include the brand, product names, and emotionally related keywords (eg, “good” or “disappointing”).
Conducting competitive analysis thoroughly and continuously
Trendspotting is like a race between you and your competitor. Therefore, it is essential to keep track of the types of campaigns your direct competitors are running and how they are evolving.
Following is not about imitating what your “neighbor” is doing but comparing and contrasting your marketing with them. As mentioned above, firms in the same industry can pursue entirely different trends. However, there are usually quite a few steps involved in relation to each other.
Identify your own “trending” content
Trendspotting is not based on emotion, it’s a measurable activity. If you want to find out what types of content or campaigns are your guide, the social media metrics will let you know.
Let’s say there is a specific type of post or content (e.g. influencer, UGC) that generates lots of engagement. Meanwhile, you should consider creating similar content. This way, you can spot popular trends and topics among your active content.
Actively chat with influencers in your industry
Ultimately, you cannot spot trends if you confine yourself to a single “island”.
Regularly participate in events, seminars from online to offline, chat on Facebook, Twitter, … related to the industry and observe what is happening right now.
You can learn a lot more about your industry by following influencers related to your industry.
Last but not least, don’t forget to read articles, newsletters, and case studies relevant to your business. If you want to be a trendspotter, you need to update information regularly.
Conclusion
Hope the above article will help you understand what trendspotting is and how to build hot content with trendspotting. As can be seen, this is the factor that will help track trends that can help your business completely overwhelm your competition. By developing a trendspotting strategy following the steps above, you can stay informed about what’s going on in your industry a lot easier.