The world that we live in is a extremely fast-paced and being up-to-date can give you the ultimate edge. However, keeping track with all the talk isn’t always that simple and I am here to help you become a rock star of current emerging trends and events. Being a rock star in this field will help you predict the cultural shifts that are constantly happening around us.
Why is this important? Staying up-t0-date will give you the ability to…
- Conduct real-time market research
- Know what people are talking about
- Have a conversation
- Know how to reach the public
- Analyze what works
Here are the tools that will help you achieve all of the above:1. Watch Youtube Most Popular/Most Viewed Videos
(Links: Youtube Most Popular, Youtube Most Viewed)
Why? Because Youtube is the second largest search engine and ranks as the 4th most popular web site on the web. Take advantage and use it in order to get a glimpse of our current culture.
I know there is a lot of stupid stuff being watched on Youtube but as much as you might hate it – this is the culture. Take advantage and start creating content that is original yet uses similar techniques as these videos.
Also, look at the categories that fit to your own niche and analyze those videos as well.
2. Staying Updated with Twitter’s Trending Topics (Search)
(Links: Twitter Search)
Twitter has become the ultimate marketer’s tool as it lets you know what is popular before it even hits the news. There are many tools that can help you track emerging trends with the main one being Twitter’s homepage.
The hottest tool to stay updated with Twitter’s trending topics is TweetMeMe. What is TweetMeMe? It “is a service which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme categorizes these links into Categories, Subcategories and Channels, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what you’re interested in.”
There are also many other tools such as: Trendestic, Monitter, and Twitturly.
3. Keeping up with Google’s Trends
(Links: Google Trends)
Google not wanting to be swept away by Twitter’s trending topics has recently started updating their Google Trends to daily instead of monthly. Google Trends gives you glimpse at the most popular topics by analyzing the searches taking place on Google.
Google Trends is in still early stages of development and will definitely be adding more functionality in order to battle Twitter over being the source for emerging trends.
4. Social Bookmarking Websites
I can’t say it better than Wikipedia- “Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet.” And also a great method for you to analyze what is popular at the moment (may not be as up to date as Twitter). There are a gazilion number of social bookmarking websites but only a few truly deliver. Here is a few names – Mixx, Digg, Yahoo Buzz, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
Can you recommend any other ways to help us stay updated with the current pop culture?
September13th
When Advertising Works
Posted in: When Advertising Works
Traditional media is not dead, YET. The above chart from Silicon Alley Insider shows how compared to the same period a year ago, overall U.S. ad spending declined 15.4% during the first half of 2009, Nielsen reports. Internet had the smallest decline (-1%) and surprisingly, ad spending in Cable TV actually increased by 1.5%.
Contrary to the popular belief of social media evangelists, traditional media will not die. It will live but not in the same condition it did before. Traditional media (magazine, newspaper, TV, radio, etc.) in its glory Mad Men days can be compared to a young, popular, jock we all knew in high school. He had all the energy, praise, and women at his feet. But as he got older, muscles faded, praise was hard to come by, and if he was lucky he might have ended up with his high school sweetheart. The glory days are definitely over, but he still lives an average life today.
Traditional advertising will always have its place and it can still be very effective. The increase in Cable TV spending is no joke. In recessionary times, people are more likely to watch regular cable rather than its premium counterparts.
Hence, I would like to introduce to all of you a new category to this blog – When Advertising Works. This category will feature traditional advertisements that really make the mark, get our attention, and hopefully get us spending as well.
Ally Bank TV Commercials -BBH NEW YORK
You have probably already noticed these humorous ads created by BBH New York. Ally Bank ads very effective through their portrayal of the unfair practices of the greedy banks that we all have become accustomed to.
