One of the most effective ways to connect with your audience is to write about trending research subjects in your article and on social media.
Not everything you publish has to be related to a current event, but using trending topics strategically will allow you to ride waves of demand in both search and social platforms.
Definition of trend
A trend is an assumed development in the future that will have a long-term and lasting effect on something and changes it. Current developments are moving in a different direction or are intensifying even more.
Nutritional trends are an example. In the upswing in the 1960s, fatty food was part of the quality of life. Today, the trends are moving towards healthy eating and vegan nutrition.
Trends in an industry usually have far-reaching effects. Nutritional trends, for example, are causing changes in the retail, catering, tourism, leisure, and agricultural sectors.
Trending research
Trending research is what it sounds like. It’s about identifying and analyzing patterns in data to predict future events, such as consumer behavior or business performance. Dealing with trends and the future is one of the most important tasks of innovation. It provides the basis for the development of the innovation strategy and future orientation, from which the search fields and the roadmap are derived.
You can’t travel to the future to know how it will turn out. Researcher can’t read in any book what the world looks like in 15 years. You can only guess the future.
A solid foundation of expertise and facts is important. The best source for the predictions and characteristics of trends is therefore to bring together as many expert opinions as possible. Trend researchers use statistical methods to analyze historical information to determine whether there have been any changes over time. Sometimes referred to as trend spotters, these analysts also look at other factors that may affect these changes, including economic conditions, demographics, technology, marketing strategies, etc.
To obtain a good foundation from future information, with which you can continue to work in innovation management, a systematic approach, process, and methodology is required.
Why Is Trending Research Identification Important?
Trend analysis can improve your business by helping you identify areas within your organization that are doing well, as well as areas that are not doing well. In this way, it provides valuable evidence to help inform better decision-making around your longer-term strategy as well as ways to future-proof your business.
How Do You Identify the Trending Research Subjects in a Field?
To date, three main approaches are widely used to identify trend research subjects: 1-Analysis of the dynamics of changes in scientific production
2-Citation analysis with its varieties
3-Content analysis, as well as their various combinations
There are many ways you can identify trending research. You can start by taking classes through your local community college or university. Trend spotters like to read magazines and newspapers. They scan articles written by experts in the field. They also look for stories that discuss current issues related to your topic.
Google Trends
Some tools can be used to supplement research. For instance, Google Trends displays a long-term overview of niche trends. It is the best tool for identifying trend research topics in your industry.
It tracks global search trends and provides a wealth of data broken down by date range, geo-location, category, search type (for example web search vs. YouTube), and more.
One of the more recent advancements of Google Trends over the last couple of years is its incorporation into Google Search. Google has become a destination not only for inputting a query but also for reading trending research subjects.
Trendhunter
Trendhunter is one of the biggest providers of trend data. It is a media brand that offers free trend data (in the form of articles) and also has several other offerings, including custom research, books, public speaking services, events, and so on.
Publications’ Editorial Calendars
Like the conference agendas, publications’ editorial calendars are often designed based on seasonal search trends that will resonate with their audience.
As you are assembling your content calendar for next year, use publication editorial calendars to inspire or find trending research subjects that you know will peak during seasonal or cultural moments.
Treendly
This tool identifies itself as the Google Alerts for Google Trends. One of the challenges with Google Trends is that traditionally there wasn’t a great way to subscribe to a specific topic.
Google Trends does offer this functionality now but there are third-party solutions like Treendly that aim to create a better user experience and source from a broader variety of sources beyond Google Trends.
How Do I Get Informed about Trending Research Topics?
One good method for finding hot topics is to look for issues that cause problems for other researchers. Begin by searching for and reading literature in your field. Start with general interest journals, but don’t limit yourself to journal publications only; you can also look for clues in the news or on research blogs.
If you want to know about blacklisted journals, click here.
How Do You Spot a Trend?
Market research methods used by trendspotters are different. The 3 types of trend analysis for future development are:
1) Trendspotting: This type of trend analysis looks at historical patterns and compares those patterns against future predictions. It’s also known as ‘forecasting’.
2) Trend forecasting: This type of trend analysis predicts which direction a particular trend may be heading over the coming years.
3) Trend interpretation: This type of trend analysis identifies the reasons behind a given trend.
Grounded Theory Analysis is another way to learn about trends. The grounded theory involves asking questions about why something happens instead of just describing what happened.