Capture Industry Trends

As communicators, you know it’s not enough to just listen to what people are saying about you. You’ve got to be three or four steps ahead of the conversation, understanding the topics that are emerging in your industry. You want to contribute thought leadership articles, craft messaging around tomorrow’s trends, and build your communication and social media plans to be flexible and nimble as new trends emerge.
What to do? Keep an eye on industry trends right alongside your brand with Radian6.

Take a quick snapshot of the landscape of the last 30 days in your industry, and show a Conversation Cloud to get a handle on what folks are talking about.

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If something looks interesting, or perhaps aligns with a project you’re doing, take a closer look.

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Now you’ve got a laser-focused view into not only the topic, but the conversation around it. Listening in on industry conversation lets you in on the general perceptions of your audience. Is this a product or idea that folks are excited about? Nervous? Looking for guidance and insights? Or perhaps they’re talking about it because they’re tired of it. No matter what the collective viewpoint is, you’ll be able to determine whether this is a topic you need to pay attention to, or one you may even want to avoid. If it’s specific to your industry, you might need to be prepared with how you’d respond to questions or requests for comment on an issue. And getting a sense of the community mindset can help you shape your engagement approach.

If you’re into green buildings, you might want to know who the key players are in that market, and who everyone is talking about. You might want to know whether the blogosphere is buzzing about LEED certification, or discover that the green scene is happening on forums or Twitter instead. Get all that information at a glance with a topic analysis graph, and break it out by keyword. Then, segment your results by media type to see the segment of Tweets about LEED Silver, and open a River of News for just those posts.

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Haven’t taken the social media plunge yet? Maybe you’re the social media advocate in your company, but you’ve gotta make the case internally for why you should bother. Take a look at your industry through the lens of social media, and give your team some concrete data that says the social web is indeed harboring lots of conversation around your industry.

From there, you can make a solid case for selecting the right tools and even the right topics of conversation to get involved with. Having industry insight at the start of a social media strategy just might give you the leg up you need to immerse, engage, and participate in the community online in an entirely new and impactful way.

Download the PDF version of Capturing Industry Trends with Radian6 here.

Interested in hearing what people are saying about your brand? Click here to get started now with Radian6.