Today I watched an intriguing video on how to spot a new trend. It has a few universal insights into trend spotting. The new trend must be the opposite of mainstream to attract the trendsetters. You can often observe trendsetters amoungst the creative arts and professions. Popular trends always start in a major city such as New York, Los Angeles, London or Paris. New trends can be easily copied or imitated and they are often associated with a celebrity.
So, how can this be of interest to a webmaster or marketer? Getting in early on a popular new trend, especially one that goes global, can be very profitable. It’s often called first mover advantage. If you set the trend, it could be a goldmine, but it’s a lot harder to achieve. It’s easier to watch new trends emerging and capitalise on them. Okay, so how can you do this?
Google trends is a terrific way to follow trends in real-time on the Internet as they unfold. It’s a powerful and underrated tool. In black Friday here already the google retail advertising blog reckons google trends predicted 2009 black Friday’s online sales of $534m and 2008 cyber Monday with online sales of $846m. Google uses the search data to predict these trends, and with the lion’s share of Internet searches, that’s a lot of data to work with. And you can subscribe to google’s RSS trend feed. So, now you can get the latest trends on the topic of your choice delivered to you.
If you want to learn more about this tool visit google insights for search. You can compare search volume patterns in specific regions, categories and timeframes. And there are some examples too. One example that caught my eye is the Glastonbury Festival in the UK. It’s a big event and always a sell-out. So, if you are an online ticket store, you will want to take a look.
Spotting a new trend could give you that competitive edge.
