Discover What Matters to People: How Does Consumer Trends Work?

A general direction in which something tends to move.

Whoever understands the customer best, wins. - Mike Gospel

Introduction to Kimola Trends

There are two main roads you can take when starting a new marketing campaign: You can try to create a message from ground zero, or you can spot what people are already interested in and tell them what they are eager to hear. Taking the first road is not unreasonable at all. However, it's challenging to succeed, and it costs a lot. The second road, on the other hand, is so much easier but still very effective. To be able to talk to your audience in a way they would like to listen; you'll need to discover what matters to them. In other words, you’ll need to join a conversation which has already begun and is on its way to become a trend. Here’s why and how.

Why are trends important for marketers?

Trends tell marketers where to look. It is much easier and cheaper for the brand to reach out and engage with the customer if the brand talks about a topic that the consumer already knows and has already shown interest in.

There's a catch, though. If something is already trending big, your competition has likely spotted it as well. That's why discovering what is on its way to being a trend is more valuable than knowing what is already trending. That’s one way you can be considered as a pioneer in the marketing world.

Does popular mean trending?

No. In this context, popular and trending are two different things. A subject might be popular for a couple of months, but the important thing is momentum. If a keyword enters the list on the 5th place, spends months on the list slowly making its way up to 4th, 3rd, and 2nd place, this means it is on its way to becoming a trend. Take Bitcoin, for example. We started to hear about it and didn't care that much. Then it gained momentum slowly and eventually became one of the most trending topics in technology.

When it comes to daily, digital, and easy communication, the brands usually act based on what is popular, whereas trends are used to build broader campaigns and strategies. So, how can you spot the difference? Enter Kimola Trends!

What is Kimola Trends?

Since its foundation in 2014, Kimola has been an expert in processing text data. Let's explain our entity extraction technology with an example: When you see Donald Trump in a text, you don't consider Donald and Trump as two separate people. Donald Trump is a concept mentioned together. Another example: Columbia is the historical female national personification of the U.S. when Columbia University is one of the leading schools in the country. The system recognizes these names or concepts, such as Columbia University, when they come together.

Trends is a feature of Kimola’s Social Research Platform which uses entity extraction technology to show the popular concepts on a specific subject. It allows brands to see what is trending in their field.

How does Trends feature work at Kimola?

Kimola’s technology turns any web addresses into a research resource by scraping web pages and automatically capturing available information as text. These texts are analyzed to extract terms and phrases to show on a timeline to identify what is trending uniquely. This means any YouTube page or Amazon product reviews can be used as a research source to know what is trending.

Our Trends algorithm scraps different sources and merges results with its categorization talent. The system categorizes the sources as it reads all the content and tags the website by its subject like technology, fashion, design, etc. If something is trending, the system measures how important it is according to the website's importance and merges the results to understand trends.

Trend lists give you the control

When using Kimola Trends, you create a "trend list," which is similar to a playlist, by adding the magazines you read, the influencers you follow, etc. and add it to the system. Kimola’s technology continuously tracks the news, articles, and other contents created related to your trend list and compares the results. If the same keyword keeps showing up on multiple sources, that keyword rises in the list. In short, entity extraction technology is used to give scores to the keywords to determine how trending they are. You may see only one list, but there is a technology behind that reads every news and merges the results, reduces workforce, and saves you time.

When you click on the titles, you’ll also see the related terms to that title. For example, if Donald Trump is trending and the reason is news about Iraq, war, and elections, you'll see these three concepts as related terms, and links to the news sources.

How is our Trends feature different than Feedly or Google Trends?

Feedly’s popularity count feature tells you how popular a certain “story” is. Kimola’s Trends feature, on the other hand, tells you how popular a “topic” is. It checks YouTube, Twitter, news sources, and even the subdomains of the sources to see what’s trending and which other keywords it’s trending with. For example, Feedly can tell you that people are very interested in a certain latest story, say Kanye West trying skateboarding. However, to know if Kanye West’s interest in skateboarding is creating a trend towards skateboards, you’ll need Kimola.

Then again, Google Trends shows the trending stories on the country basis only. You can see what’s trending in the U.S. for example, but you can’t see industry-specific trends, unlike Kimola.

In which cases can I use Trends as a marketer?

Kimola’s Popular Topics list is convenient when creating daily or real-time content, such as blog posts or social media messages. It helps you understand what’s going on in the industry at that moment. Trends feature, on the other hand, is a perfect source when building big ad campaigns. You can use it to decide the concepts and messages in your campaign.

Trends feature is much more than a marketing tool, though. You can even change your product range based on Trends. For example, if you are in fashion and you see that low waist pants are trending again, your production department can start to allocate more resources on these type of pants, while your marketing department starts to work on to create the best ad campaign to sell your new products.

How long should I track Trends as a marketer, what is the business model of Kimola's Trends Feature?

Kimola is a subscription-based service. Every trends list counts as an audience. You can choose between our plans with one audience, three audiences, five audiences, eight audiences, and 15+ audiences. If your priority is to spot what's on its way to becoming trending based on a specific industry, we recommend a minimum of a 3-month subscription. However, even a 1-month subscription can come in handy if you'd like to follow the real-time popularity of a topic to decide what type of content you need to create on your blog or social media.

How Can I Try Kimola?

If you’d like to know more about Kimola’s Social Research Platform and its Trends feature, please feel free to ask us. You can always reach us via Contact Sales Page, or you can book a call via Calendly.