What if your business strategy was obsolete even before you started? Successful firms must be aware of current trends and incorporate them into their marketing and sales strategy. However, if a corporation does not have a robust trend monitoring plan in place, its data will constantly be out of date. So, how can you develop a trend-tracking strategy and maintain your company on the cutting edge? Continue reading to find out our best advice!
1. Discover Thought Leaders
Any trend monitoring plan is based on a basic concept: work smarter, not harder. Instead of reinventing the wheel, identify thought leaders in your niche to simply track trends.
Thought leaders, by definition, remain on top of emerging trends and share their views with the rest of the world. By actively following such leaders, you can learn about trends while they are still new.
Your firm’s position as a thought leader may change over time. However, until that time, you may rely on today’s thought leaders to assist you in developing tomorrow’s initiatives.
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2. Maintain Your Social Media Presence
When it comes to your personal life, you might not be a huge lover of social media. However, when it comes to your business, one of the most crucial things you can employ is social networking!
This is because social media allows you to track trends in a variety of novel ways. Remember how we said you should listen to what industry thought leaders have to say? In other circumstances, it may be as simple as following them on social media.
More significantly, you can see what customers are saying. Social media services, like Twitter, immediately notify you of which topics and hashtags (more on these later) are trending. By staying on top of these rising subjects, you will have a better understanding of what’s now popular and what’s already out of date.
You can also reach out to influencers through social media. You can not only benefit from what they say but collaborating with an influencer can provide your campaign a huge boost.
3. Interact in Relevant Online Communities
Your online trend-monitoring experiences don’t have to end with social media. The next step is to look for online groups with interests similar to your industry’s.
You are not required to declare your brand presence in these communities or your position in a leadership role. If you don’t want to actively participate, you can “lurk” without saying anything. The most critical aspect is to pay attention to what others are posting.
Consider these online communities to be a type of social media crowdsourcing. You can learn about prevalent concerns in an industry by keeping track of what different industry specialists are concerned about. Similarly, by watching what great news everyone provides, you can keep track of growing trends and technologies that may benefit your own firm.
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4. Customer Outreach
When it comes to trend analysis, you don’t necessarily have to look far. Your consumers, for example, are a fantastic source of vital information!
You are probably already keeping in touch with your most loyal consumers via mailing lists and social media. And by just asking open-ended questions and conducting surveys and polls, you may learn a lot about what’s happening and what customers are interested in.
Finally, this technique is straightforward. We must first ask someone a question if we want to gain an answer from them. The simplest method to find out what clients want is to ask them directly.
Just be ready for their answers and their candor. To make the most of what you learn, your business must be willing to make some significant changes in a short amount of time!
5. Monitor Hashtags
We already covered the advantages of monitoring social media trends. While there are numerous ways to accomplish this, you should pay careful attention to the hashtags that users create.
On the most basic level, hashtags are useful for grouping together a large number of user postings under a single umbrella. This can assist you in doing a deep dive into whatever is trendy at the time.
On a higher level, hashtags might be used as inspiration for future digital marketing activities. You won’t have to settle for monitoring what’s trending if you create a catchy hashtag. Instead, you can sit back and watch your promotion become viral.
What Is the Next Step in Developing a Trend Monitoring Strategy?
You now understand how to create a robust trend monitoring approach. But, do you know who can assist you in making the most of it?
We specialize in marketing solutions spanning from SEO and site design to brand creation and videography at Wedesign. Contact us today to see what we can do for your company!