On the Internet everything moves at a breakneck speed. When you fail to keep up, using old memes and references, it dates you.
While that might not be a big deal on a personal level, it can be one for your brand.
Too many companies are behind the times, leaving customers rolling their eyes with every Success Kid and Most Interesting Man In The World graphic posted on Twitter. It doesn’t engage because it isn’t relevant.
To succeed as a marketer and writer, keeping up with trends is crucial, so here are 10 tools to help you do it.
Tools to Monitor Trends
1. Reddit
Reddit claims to be the front page to the Internet, and it’s an apt description. A central hub for content, many trends originate there. If you find lists of stories on sites like Buzzfeed and Thought Catalog, many of them are literally pilfering those tales from AskReddit and similar subreddits.
It is a great place to monitor the latest hot thing that is coming from the web, as well as follow references that make their way off of the site and into the wider social consciousness.
2. Google Trends
This tool kind of died for awhile, but it has made a big comeback. Not only is it the best way to see what is being searched for, you can see what news is trending, videos that are hot and social media searches.
All of it is visually presented, which is both helpful and more attractive than looking at an endless stream of keywords. It even gives you breakdowns of the trends themselves to see what is hot about them, not just what they are in and of themselves.
3. Buzzsumo
Content research, influencers, and trend marketing, oh my! These are the three prongs of Buzzsumo, one of the more popular tools you can find for trend watching.
This tool tells you what’s trending now, what’s being shared, Facebook analysis, and more.
Scope out the best backlinks. Find out who the hottest social sphere technorati are and what they’re saying. You can even see trends over time, as they allow you to specify how far you want to go back. I’d recommend remaining in the safer 5 years or less range for the most relevant data.
4. Twitter
This isn’t my favorite way to monitor trends because it’s pretty limited in its scope. But it is helpful if you’re particular active on Twitter and it’s a primary means for your promotion and marketing.
Just watch their search page for the latest hot thing to pass through the social platform.
Certain tools monitor Twitter trends (Trends Map, Keyhole, etc), which may pick up on the less obvious trends as they build.
You may also want to keep an eye on influencers there, as often they are the ones who are making the trends in the first place. A well-placed eye could give you a head start on taking advantage of those trends when they come while providing you with an opening to speak to those influencers and build a relationship.
5. SmartBrief
Newsletters are still incredibly effective ways of disseminating information across your organization. But they’re also a way to keep up with what’s hot in your industry.
You can search for the most important stories in those industries through Smart Brief, a curation of the most critical and popular stories circulating at any given moment.
Since they aren’t specific to any single niche, you can branch out and watch related industries as well, getting a quick picture of what’s trending without combing through every news website out there.
6. YouTube Trending
We all know how much of the future is in video. It has become one of the most powerful forms of content there is and everyone is getting one board. A single viral video can power a campaign for years.
Because of that, it’s necessary to watch the trends in videos closely, because they’ll find their way into the collective consciousness and, before you know it, will be referenced everywhere.
If you’re late to the party, it will be even worst than being late on a meme. Their trending videos section is a must-watch one for everyone.
Tools to Organize Trends
7. Zest
Zest is the digital marketing curation platform that has one goal: Pick the best content and present it to the marketing community. It uses a multi-level moderation system to feature the best content possible.
Besides its obvious educational value (the ability to access useful marketing resources), Zest offers some great content organization features. If you come across any article you’d like to go deeper into (or share with your team), you can add it to Trello right away.
You can also access trending content on Zest and sort it out using Trello.
8. Salesmate
If you’re into lead generation and publish trending content to build your email list, you should build an effective lead organization system that would talk to your content marketing efforts, tying everything together.
Salesmate is my preferred sales platform because it organizes leads and lets you analyze the most effective lead generation process. Use it to record your leads and, with time, you’ll be able to see which of your content assets brought your most valuable leads.
You can integrate it with lots of useful content tools to get a deeper insight into your content marketing and automate some of the repetitive tasks. You can integrate Salesmate into your lead generation forms and use one of these plugins to make the process much more effective.
Tools to Publicize Trends
9. Cyfe
Cyfe is a multi-featured business platform that can be used for monitoring Twitter search, social media stats, invoicing, and so much more. You can use it to publicize content to social media channels to use the trends to get more attention to your social media updates.
Cyfe has powerful publishing tools allowing you to publish/schedule Tweets, Facebook updates, Linkedin and Pinterest shares.
10. Viral Content Bee
Viral Content Bee is more of a peer sharing of social shares, but it has its place on this list. (Disclosure: This is my website!)
You can see what other people are sharing and what topics are most popular on different blogs.
You can also keep an ear to the ground, as it were, hearing the latest buzz just as it starts spreading around the web. It is a great way to get ahead of a trend as it builds.
Trends: Power Your Marketing
You never want to be behind on what’s hot. With these 10 tools, you never have to be again.
Keep up with what is going on in the world. Watch for major headlines the second they go up. Find out about more obscure ideas that are only starting to gain traction. Be at the forefront of what is “in.”
The effort will be rewarded with more relevant marketing strategies that really connect with your audience.
