We live in a fickle society so what is ‘hot’ one day will be turn out to be ‘so yesterday’ the next. Generally speaking, trends come in waves and last more than one day. To be successful with social marketing, you should consider capitalizing on what is ‘hot’ at any given period.
To make matters a little more confusing, what is considered hot on one site should not always be accepted as a general trend? Each site has a particular demographic so ‘hot’ themes on one does not mean it will be hot on another. In fact can be the exact opposite.
There are several places to find information, the most obvious being the sites themselves. However, you should be careful of site specific trends that are fairly narrow. These tend to come and go quickly depending on what news there is around at the time.
Google Trends is one place to start and provides a good cross section of what people are thinking of at the time. Facebook have Lexicon whilst Twitter have Twist. In the blog world there are several options which include StumbleUpon and Technorati.
If you know what is hot at the time, you can tap into that conversation and perhaps inject some of your own marketing. The real key to a successful marketing campaign is to either identify a trend before it happens, or be the catalyst that starts new trend.
