14 Simple Solutions for Tracking Your Industry’s Trends

14 trend-tracking tools to keep tabs on your industry

There are many tools available to help you track industry trends, but not all of them are helpful or provide consistent results. Here are a few that work:

1. Feedly

This service aggregates all of the stories, outlets, keywords and trends that interest you into one easy-to-manage list. This way, you can keep up with trends and news stories. Feedly can save you time from scouring the internet for the information you are interested in.

“We use … [it] to capture trends on how much traction our brand is getting in the marketplace,” Jared Brown, CEO at Hubstaff, told business.com. “Viewing the data alongside our competitors’ data lets us see our share of voice and pivot quickly if trends shift. Without having valuable trend data, we wouldn’t be running as efficiently or benefiting from strong growth rates.”

Tips:

• Set up distinct folders or feeds so you can scan for competitor insights and emerging trends. Use a team folder so colleagues can follow the account.
• Use Feedly’s Power Search feature to find new insights and expert opinions from a wide range of sources.

2. Stratfor

Stratfor is a geopolitical intelligence firm that provides intelligence information and aggregates trends and articles from sources worldwide. This is an excellent resource for businesses that operate internationally. You can use it to help anticipate opportunities and events worldwide so you’ll have a better understanding of international developments.

Tips:

• Set up customized email alerts to receive immediate updates and analysis on global themes, regions and Situation Reports (breaking news).
• Organize your reports and analysis using the “My Collection” feature for easier searching and bookmarking.

3. Facebook

Facebook can also operate like a news aggregator. You can “like” industry publications and quickly review them via the Pages feed. The feed is useful because it combines pictures and enough text to know if the article is relevant to you.

Tips:

• Mark Facebook pages belonging to your competitors and industry magazines as “Favorites” so their content is prioritized in your newsfeed.
• Use the “My Collection” feature to save items by topic.

3. Slack

Slack is a workplace chat application that allows teammates to communicate easily. It acts as an internal social network where users can share a variety of content, including relevant news. Users can also have one-on-one conversations. “You can gain a lot of insight from real-time conversation,” Aly Jamison, senior PR manager at RAIN Group, explained. “Pay attention to discussions happening in Slack communities.”

Tips:

• Research and join dedicated Slack channels for each industry discussion to organize conversations and to identify emerging trends and insights of interest.
• Integrate Slack with RSS feeds for focused news stories or with the follow bot app for updates from relevant social media channels to find trends.

5. Private lists on X (formerly Twitter)

X (formerly Twitter) offers businesses a lot of value by allowing users to create private lists that you can manage and sort however you like. This is a great way to manage and organize a variety of industry-related information.

Tips:

• Create private lists specifically for competitors, industry leaders and market influencers so you can instantly scan for focused updates.
• Use XPro (formerly TweetDeck) to get a clearer, column-based view, allowing you to monitor multiple lists and keywords simultaneously in real time.

6. Moz Top 10

The Moz Top 10 is a semimonthly email newsletter that shares inbound marketing news, insider tips and relevant links uncovered by the Moz team. This newsletter is a great way to stay current on internet marketing trends.

Tips:

• Bookmark the most relevant articles from each issue to revisit during your marketing meetings to help you decide future campaign direction.
• Share stories with heads of teams and departments to get their insights and spark strategic conversations on emerging marketing opportunities.

7. This Week in Startups Ticker (formerly Launch Ticker)

This Week in Startups Ticker (formerly Launch Ticker) is designed to help entrepreneurs stay on top of news about trends and startup funding. Subscribing to the AM Daily newsletter is free, and the newsletter is an easy way to get important info in one location.

Tips:

• Keep an eye out for funding announcements for startups in your niche to spot potential competitors and investors.
• Use startup trends you read about as ways to start conversations on LinkedIn or X to make new contacts out of investors, mentors and fellow founders.

8. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s largest B2B social network, bringing together decision-makers, reps and recruiters across a vast range of industries to make connections.

Darcy Ann Flanders, CEO and founder at BaselineGroupNY, said her team follows clients, competitors and finance companies on LinkedIn. “By scrolling our LinkedIn feeds daily, we get news on new products, new hires and industry events,” she said. “A lot of the events come with new visual designs that inform us so we can see where others are going design- and branding-wise.”

Tips:

• Follow relevant companies, industry influencers and trending hashtags (like #adtech or #fintech) so your newsfeed is target- and opportunity-rich. “[Such] … tasks are the best for staying current,” Andrew Barrow, founder at Revenue Arc, said. He tracks ad-specific trends on LinkedIn and attends ad-tech webinars to create and refine marketing approaches for his clients.
• Use LinkedIn’s advanced search or Sales Navigator to identify high-value prospects, track your competitors’ hiring patterns and find new prospects you can warm up with a message.

9. Flipboard

The Flipboard app’s user-friendly interface lets you quickly read and digest information from your chosen publications. It offers an easy way to identify industry-relevant sources and congregate that content in one location.

Tips:

• Create magazines for yourself and your colleagues on specific industry topics and competitors so you’re exposed to the same knowledge. This is great for generating focused discussions.
• Look around Flipboard with its Explore and Community tabs to find new curators and fresh thinkers to get innovative perspectives and trending insights.

10. Your network

One way to keep track of trends is to build a network of other business owners within your industry. Set aside time to connect with your network regularly to keep up with the issues and trends they are seeing.

Tips:

• Dedicate some of your spare time to proactively building new connections with peers from related industries to broaden the scope and diversity of your network.
• Organize clubs or get-togethers with peers for face-to-face sessions where each member brings a topic or challenge to the meeting for discussion.

11. Custom Google Alerts

Google Alerts can help you stay on top of industry news, competitors and your own press. Google allows you to set alerts for any keywords. Whenever those keywords appear in a news article, Google will send you an alert with a link to the news source. You can choose how often you want to receive the alerts.

Tips:

• Just like when you’re searching on Google, use quotation marks around keywords and phrases to get alerts on exact matches.
• Create alerts based on press releases from industry bodies or on regulatory standards (like the FDA or EPA) to help you better forecast shifts in policies and procedures.

10. Google Trends

Google Trends is a website that shows how often a particular search term is entered into Google. It’s one of the best options for companies focused on keyword research. You can use Google Trends to track search terms and receive detailed data analytics about the people searching for these terms. [Read related: The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Big Data & Data Analytics]

“I can predict when we’ll experience peaks in client interest, enabling us to proactively manage our workflow,” Jim Esposito, co-founder of PortaleItaly, said. “Leveraging these insights allows me to strategically allocate resources, ensuring my team remains responsive and effective, even during peak demand.”

Tips:

• Use “News Search” with the filters set to the last 24 hours, seven days or one month to spot breaking industry news.
• Choose the product name, then select “Google Shopping Search,” then press Enter and scroll down to see the trending related queries for that search term.

13. BrandMentions

BrandMentions is a social listening tool that allows you to track mentions of anyone or anything. For example, you can monitor if your company, your products, or your competitors are trending on social media or appear in the print, broadcast, or digital news media.

This real-time capability is powerful in the influencer market, according to Clarabella Burns, founder and CEO of Living Motions Management, who can identify which influencers are driving meaningful conversations to target partnerships and enhance client campaigns.

“Trends often spark from emotionally resonant content that taps into something deeply felt by the audience,” she explained.

Tips:

• Find out how your audience really feels about your company and its products and services with BrandMentions’ Sentiment Analysis tool.
• Use the Competitive Benchmarking feature to track how often your competitors are mentioned compared to your own. This way, you can identify market trends and pinpoint opportunities to strengthen your market position.

14. Exploding Topics

Exploding Topics is a newsletter that provides a weekly overview of trending topics, and it includes expert analysis and commentary. You can sign up for the newsletter for free or invest in the paid subscription if you want even more information.

Tips:

• Use Exploding Topics’ free keyword research tool to uncover keywords related to trending topics, helping you create timely, high-ranking content before competitors do.
• The platform’s free trending topics allows you to find emerging trends and growth opportunities over the last two, five, 10 and 15 years on a variety of topics to help you target your specific niche. For keyword-driven searches over shorter time spans, you need a subscription.

What are trend-tracking tools?

Trend-tracking tools are software and other methods used to collect and analyze consumer data. These tools can help your company understand what your customers are looking for and where your industry is headed.

These tools include traditional market research methods such as surveys and focus groups, as well as software for social listening and analytics.

How do trend-tracking tools help your business?

By staying on top of industry trends, you can anticipate customer demands. You might see a demand for a product or service before other companies do. Trend-tracking tools allow you to anticipate changes in consumer buying behavior.

Here are the biggest benefits of using trend-tracking tools:

• Understand your customers: Trend-tracking tools will give you more insight into your customers’ behavior and preferences. This helps you ensure your products and services remain relevant to what your customers need.
• Know your competitors: Trend-tracking tools can give you insight into your competitors, their products and their pricing model. This information can help you see how they’re changing and adapting to the market.
• Find new opportunities: When you understand and can identify future trends, you’re able to recognize opportunities. You can identify a new target market or create a new product or service.
• Make data-driven decisions: Making a major change in your business can be intimidating, but trend-tracking tools ensure you’re making decisions based on data, not just a gut feeling.
• Become a more innovative company: Staying on top of trends in your industry helps you become a more innovative and resilient company.

How much should you trust trend data?

Jeffrey Herzog, founder and CEO at Avenue Z, warned that leaders often assume they’re tracking the right trends. “Your trend-tracking is a product of your own curated reality, your feed, your past experiences and your settings,” he said. “You don’t know what you don’t know, and the smartest leaders gut-check their metrics with people they trust — on their team and in their core audiences, from customers to the board to the media.”

If you hear agreement from stakeholders like customers and employees that something is shifting, then it could be the time to act, according to Herzog. “The critical part of turning trend data into actionable business decisions is associating your brand with those trends in the right, most impactful, most relevant way,” he said.

Jared Koll, marketing director of Outsource Consultants, also advised companies to compare multiple sources of trend data. For example, he noted, there are platforms that businesses pay to promote “trending” topics or tags, which can hide organic trends that reveal better market insights. Rely on a platform that does this and you’ll make decisions on incomplete or biased data, overlooking real opportunities.

“It’s like having a mechanic friend who tells you which used car is worth buying because they’ve worked on all of them,” Koll explained. “You need an unbiased voice who can show you all the pros and cons so you’re not just hearing a sales pitch.”

Mark Fairlie contributed to this article.