Various news and trends are constantly popping up in every industry. Without any novelty, businesses would never progress, and they would stagnate. Today, we argue that the key to business success is staying informed which means you should always monitor trends and track various news, events, and changes.
💡 Read Media Monitoring: The Ultimate Guide
This piece reveals the importance of staying updated about your industry’s trends and news and shares six easy steps to start monitoring them.
Why Is It Important to Monitor Trends and News in Your Industry
There are a few reasons, all very important from your viewpoint as a business owner.
To begin with, being familiar with the industry trends portrays you as a modern and “up to date” company. In other words, when you know what’s happening, it’s easier to stay “new and fresh” in the eyes of potential customers.
Today, businesses are constantly checking out new trends and searching for ways to stay on top of the competition. It means being up to date with all the essential things in your niche and industry for your business. Otherwise, you will quickly vanish – and being irrelevant is the last thing a company wants to be.
For example if you are in the travel industry – Consumers demand cleanliness of the facility following the covid-19, the number of solo travelers are increasing, storage luggage service is becoming more popular, tech adoption in travel is fast accelerating and many more. That is why it’s important to know the current trends in your industry so you can adapt and align your marketing to the current market trend.
Second of all, knowing what’s happening around you is beneficial from your bottom line’s point of view.
Imagine running your business without general knowledge about what’s trending and what’s not.
You decide to launch a product, you invest time and money in it, only to have it fail. All of this only to have your effort quickly forgotten by customers. Now, something else is trending, and your business is considered outdated and not innovative. Sadly, this won’t get you many customers.
In just a few moments, your business freezes all its operations because:
- You don’t follow the news.
- You have zero knowledge about your own industry’s trends.
Not only does it mean a financial loss, but your reputation and position could suffer greatly.
For these reasons and more, it’s simply vital that you monitor the industry news and trends.
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How to Stay up to Date with Your Industry’s Trends and News in 6 Simple Steps
Now that you know why it’s essential to always keep an eye out for your news and trends, let’s find out the best way to do so. In just six simple steps, you can drastically change how your business currently functions for the better.
Without further ado, let’s see the details.
# 1 Monitor trends on social media regularly
Social media is an important channel for brands to reach out to their target audience, and there is absolutely no doubt about it in 2022. After all, it’s a platform that is constantly growing. For this reason, brands with a solid social media presence are more likely to be seen as credible and trustworthy.
Source: Statista
The insights that people can derive from social media are invaluable. Thus, it is critical for brands to monitor social media regularly and take the proper steps to stay on top of their industry’s news and trends. Think about data like sentiment analysis, influencer dashboards, social media engagement, impressions, and more. All these present news and trends that companies must be aware of!
Monitoring social media channels and staying up-to-date with the latest industry trends will help you stay relevant and stand out from your competitors who may not be following these practices.
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#2 Engage with your customers
Consumers of your industry know ‘what’s up’ better than anyone. It would be best if you used this to your advantage. And the best thing is that it doesn’t require effort since you’re already chatting to customers anyway!
If that’s not the case, don’t worry! There are media monitoring tools out there that can track your customers and discover whether or not they talk about your brand online. It doesn’t even have to be your brand – you could set these tools to monitor specific terms and keywords you want. This way, you can engage with valuable insights in real-time.
A few simple tips will make your interactions with customers more insightful, giving you the necessary and valuable knowledge:
- ask a lot of questions
- look for behavior patterns and pick up on them
- show interest in your customers: this will make them open up
- collect feedback
These four simple things will let you effortlessly stay on top of the latest news and trends.
Read How Can Fashion Brands Benefit from Media Monitoring?
#3 Keep in touch with industry experts
While customers are fantastic sources of information and should indeed be “utilized” to help, not all of them may bring the type of insights that you demand. This applies to situations when you’re after more in-depth and specific knowledge.
Luckily, there’s a solution to this, and it’s called: industry experts.
To stay up-to-date with what’s happening in the industry, you must keep in touch with the experts who are active users of your product or service category. One way to do this is by reading their blogs and following them on social media.
You can also always reach out to them and set up a call to chat about the latest trends – why not make friends and learn something new simultaneously?
#4 Keep an eye out for the competition
Are you aware of the power that your competition has over you? If not, this is exactly why you should be watching them closely. Often, your competitor might have access to the knowledge you don’t yet have, and vice versa. Using this knowledge, they might be performing actions that can give you hints and advice on your own next business’s operations.
You need to always be up to date with what your competitors are doing, especially successful competitors. Many researchers have pointed out how important it is to watch successful competitors closely and monitor the trends surrounding them, to improve one’s own business.
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#5 Take part in industry events
Another tip we have for you is always to take part in industry events. Small, medium, large ones. Within the country and abroad, local and international. Digital and face-to-face.
These events present the ideal opportunity to get out there, connect, and learn about the latest trends and news. It’s precisely at events like this where new trends are born, and you should be there for their arrival to take full advantage of them!
One example of events in the fashion industry is, of course, Fashion Week. It’s a place where all the latest fashion trends enter this world, and it’s something that fashion companies should keep a close eye on.
Later on, it will be up to you to use the knowledge and tips you learn during such events to ramp up your marketing, increase brand awareness, drive customer loyalty, and much more. Also, don’t forget that events are fun too!
#6 Engage with online research using useful tools
Last but not least, nothing is more powerful than numbers and data – ideally, research-based, with evident proof.
If you want to find out the latest purchase trends, sentiment trends, consumer behavior and attitudes, shopping patterns, and much more, it’s time that you start engaging with online research. Many accessible (and free) and affordable tools are designed to give you a heads up before anyone spots trends.
One of these tools is Determ. It’s a perfect solution for monitoring your online brand mentions in real-time and finding trends and news.
Any keywords and mentions you want to track – Determ does the job for you. With real-time alerts and many useful metrics it tracks, not one piece of news or trend will escape your attention – and they’re all confirmed with numbers!
How Determ Can Help You Stay up to Date with News and Trends
A lot of the steps we covered today have one thing in common. More specifically, they can be completed using simple, user-friendly brand monitoring software like Determ.
Using Determ, you can engage with online research and regularly monitor social media and keep in touch with industry experts and what they’re saying. Determ is the ideal tool for both small and large businesses for all these reasons.
P.S. You don’t need a credit card to sign up for a free seven-day trial.
Start Monitoring Your Industry Trends and News
And that’s a wrap! Now you know how to closely monitor trends and news in your industry with our 6 simple steps.
Today, we covered the importance of keeping your eyes and ears open for valuable knowledge. We also shared easy ways to track trends and news – all extremely necessary to make your business flourish.