Trending is a word that you have probably heard before but what does it mean? Trending in business is an overall movement of an organization in a certain direction. The word itself has two parts, the first part is the direction, which could be any one thing, the second part is the period during which that direction is taking place. Trending is a generalization, and you cannot expect to find a trend in one company at one time and not another company at a different time.
Trending can be defined as a general disposition of the masses about some topic, idea, or even a product. Now let’s look at how you might go about picking trends. You first need to decide what topics you want to analyze. Do you need to focus on current events or trends? Do you need to concentrate on global issues or local issues? Once you decide on a topic, start looking for examples of people during various periods or events that are expressing or participating in a certain trend.
Once you have chosen your topic, use a search engine to look up specific information on the topic. Do you get a lot of searches on current events or trends? If so, this is probably the type of topic that you would like to monitor and study. Do the search terms and see what comes up, do you see seasonal fluctuations? Remember, search volume goes up and down all the time so it is important to monitor trends over a long term basis rather than just focusing on a short term search term.
Take the search terms and analyze the top ten searches over the last three months on Google. What do you find? Lots of advertisements that advertise products that feature the keyword ” trending topics”. This is good, if the keywords were all relevant. If there were lots of advertisements and only some were really good quality, then maybe you need to see trends over a longer period of time, maybe even a year or more.
One tool that I have found to be a great way to see trends is called Google Trends. With a free account at Google, you can find out a lot about what is being said about any given topic or even find out about new trends. There is also an option to upgrade your account that will give you access to a more advanced and targeted set of tools. Using this search term or any of the others that are available, is a great way to learn more about trends. The more you learn about them the more you will know how to take advantage of them.
Some other great ways to learn about trends are by joining discussion groups on sites like Yahoo or MSN, and reading what other people are commenting on. Be sure to listen to what they are commenting on, as well as to try to take a step back from whatever it is they are commenting about and think about what they are saying logically. By doing this, you will be able to better determine what people are talking about at the moment. Keep in mind that the internet is always changing, so just because something is trending now doesn’t mean that it will remain that way for much longer. Just keep an eye out for trends that may end up making a large impact on your business in the future.