How to detect trends through social media

An incredible strategy for capturing trends in the market is coolhunting or netnography. We explain what it is and what they are for.
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Do the terms netnography, digital coolhunting or social listening ring a bell? All of them are related to the "art" and "science" of detecting trends through social media. When you finish this section, you will master these concepts and their usefulness for marketing, and you will know what tools you can use to become a true 2.0 trend hunter.

A few years ago, the coolhunters They were professionals who traveled to the main world capitals (Tokyo, New York, London, Berlin or Barcelona) with the mission of observing what was "beginning to wear", to detect trends that would later become fashions. With the arrival of social media, all this has changed and it is not necessary to leave home to hunt the latest trends. With training, intuition and knowledge of the appropriate methodologies and tools, you can do it with the click of a button.

If you think that finding trends is only a matter of sectors such as fashion or culture, you are wrong. In any field of activity there are always innovations, you can try to position yourself at the head of them, join them once you have verified that they have acceptance, or stay behind.

MAIN ADVANTAGES

The main advantages of dedicating efforts to detecting trends can be summarized as:

  • It allows you to get ahead of the competition by being the first to show, sell, communicate something that will be appreciated by users.
    Position your brand as innovative and cool, very “in trend” values.
    You anticipate the needs of the market and even create new needs.

CURIOSITY

Did you know that the “official” inventor of the selfie stick is a Canadian named Wayne Fromm? He invented it in 2002 and until selfies became a trend, it was included in the category of useless objects. Fromm currently has a partnership with Disney to design gadgets. A clear example of how by detecting trends you can create new needs.

WHAT IS NETNOGRAPHY.

Social media allow researchers to study the free opinion of individuals on the Internet and access data from thousands of individuals acting freely and spontaneously. And not only that, but they also allow the researcher to keep track of these interactions.

The netnography studies the free behavior of individuals on the Internet to analyze all the opinions, their natural conversations, doing so in real time and with sufficient critical mass to generate predictions.

Netnography analyzes the discourse of Internet users through their posts on Facebook, tweets, threads in forums, comments on posts on Instagram or the "likes" of a published video. More and more market research companies are offering their clients these netnography techniques to help them make marketing decisions based on a better understanding of their customers.

Like any methodology, netnographic analysis goes through different phases of work. Do you want to know what they are?

PHASES OF THE NETNOGRAPHIC ANALYTICAL METHODOLOGY 

Phase 1
Identify the relevant websites, forums, groups and communities according to the specific objective of the research and select a sample.

Phase 2
Collect data by collecting the relevant information and filtering out the irrelevant (you have to get into the community and understand their language, their discourse, etc.).

Phase 3
Qualitatively analyze the discourse, interpreting the information, differentiating segments, detecting trends.

Below you can see an infographic that represents the phases of this methodology:

Metodología analítica netnográfica
Netnographic analytical methodology

Look at the initial tracking phase, do you know what the noise cleaning? In the need for the researcher to filter the information to identify those topics that are relevant to the investigation.

DIGITAL COOLHUNTING

What is digital coolhunting and what is it for: 

He coolhunter is a professional, increasingly booming, whose function is to identify and hunt what will be future trends in different sectors. Taken to the digital world, the digital coolhunter uses the possibilities offered by social media, mainly social networks, to identify signals in the tastes and preferences of consumers, which allow companies to anticipate and detect new business opportunities, threats and niches. market.

In the Guide: Coolhunting, detect trends in social networks, prepared by the company sensis, provide the following definition of coolhunting:

He coolhunting It is the name given to the action of detecting trends and taking advantage of them through services or products that can benefit from them, responding to the new needs of the current market.

STAGES OF DIGITAL COOLHUNTING

  1. The innovative they adopt a trend. These are characterized because they like to stand out from the market.
  2. The Early Adopters (early adopters), who are expecting what the innovators do, appropriate their innovations and become brand advocates relying on their influence. The main motivation of Early Adopters to launch trends is to differentiate yourself from the great mass. An example of these influencers they would be the fashion bloggers.
  3. The great mass of consumers end up adopting the trend influenced by influencers and it goes viral. In this phase is when the companies obtain greater benefits since the sales of the product increase.
  4. Eventually, Early Adopters abandon the trend because it no longer allows them to be "different from the mass." That's when the Innovative re-create a new trend that is adopted by the Early Adopters and and so on.
Ejemplo de CoolHunting La Voz

EXAMPLES OF TRENDS THANKS TO DIGITAL COOLHUNTING

Two examples of how companies can take advantage of the methodology of coolhunting digital to launch new products or make existing ones fashionable.

Singing schools: The television program La Voz highlighted the need to sing among many consumers (latent theme) and this trend generated a considerable increase in clients in singing schools (opportunity).
 
Craft beer: Monitoring influencer conversations, it is detected that "craft beer" is beginning to be a trend among consumers. This trend is currently reaching stage 3 of coolhunting, when it has already been adopted by a large mass and has gone viral.
Are you interested in digital coolhunting? The editorial Anaya has published Digital coolhunting, on the lookout for the latest trends (2011), by Anna María López López. Click on the link to see all the topics covered in this book. You can also go to the website Trendhunter, specialized in coolhunting, to deepen on this topic.

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