5 reasons why brands need to monitor broad topics

Monitoring the so-called "broad topics" is the easiest way to complete the tasks mentioned above. In this case, the request for social media mentions is not limited to a single brand and can include all publications on any topic, such as food, drinks, online shopping, sports, and so on.

This article will look at 5 ways to use analytics to find actionable data on broad topics.

1. Research industry trends

Forecasting trends is one of the primary jobs that broad topics monitoring does. The truth is that people are virtually always grouped around areas of interest; for instance, they subscribe to certain communities or bloggers. The activity of these discussions can be used to gauge interest in specific trends. As a result, monitoring such topics allows you to see the activity of discussions not only in the accounts of one or more influencers but throughout all social networks simultaneously.

For example, your brand may be present in the natural beauty goods niche. How do you determine what is popular not only among your customers, but also in the market as a whole? What's more interesting is how to forecast demand for specific trends.

To address these questions, we collect all mentions of natural beauty products on social media using the YouScan social media monitoring system and see what is most actively discussed. Over the last three months, there has been a surge in interest in the morning skincare routine, whereas sensitive skin has received far less attention.

You can also use social media analytics to discover the most popular beauty items. It came out that anything related to skincare received more attention than hair products in both text and images.

2. Find promising directions for marketing communication

When promoting a large B2C brand to a wide public, monitoring broad topics can help you get helpful information about related areas. The found data will ease reaching the target audience and make marketing communication effective.

Assume you're in charge of creating marketing materials for a huge restaurant chain. YouScan can assist you in finding out what people are talking about as well as the eateries themselves. With the help of YouScan, you can find what people discuss along with the restaurants themselves. This data is a source of ideas on what topics can be included in communication strategy and help avoid negative situations. For example, over the last three months, people have begun to share more content about dining while on vacation, but they are still concerned about the safety of eating out. Knowing which aspects are essential to your customers will help to direct your efforts in the proper direction.

3. Predict the service or product trends

What attributes should a product or service have to be successful in the market? This question can also be answered using social media analytics. Suppose you plan to start a food-related business in the United States. It would be useful to know which food trends are being discussed online in this country, and more importantly, in which regions.

As the graph shows, baking and roasting were the most popular cooking methods in recent months. Meanwhile, if you want to open a bakery, Illinois and Florida are the greatest locations, while California and Taxes are the best places to open a restaurant specializing in roasted meat.

4. Collaborate with influencers

When you need to reach a large audience or launch a new promotion and get maximum coverage, working with a macro-influencer or a celebrity makes sense. But what if you want to promote your products with the help of niche influencers who don't have millions of followers? Again, broad topics monitoring can assist with such tasks.

Assume you're promoting a product or brand whose target audience is cruelty-free makeup enthusiasts. As a test, we gathered all mentions of cruelty-free cosmetics. The YouScan algorithm immediately identified the top bloggers on the subject and users who frequently publish content about such cosmetics.

Authors can be sorted based on the amount of content they publish, as well as the number of subscribers and engagement they receive.

5. Analyze visual insights

According to statistics, if a brand does not monitor visual content, it misses about 80% of mentions.

Let's have a look at how this data can be applied. Let's look at how people spend their time in restaurants as an example. Such insights would be especially helpful for restaurant businesses. This time, however, we will not examine all the mentions in the topic, but rather the images that users post on social media. 

During the last months, when the quarantine restrictions were over, people returned to celebrating birthdays in restaurants. Also, bakery remains one of the most popular birthday treats. YouScan's visual insights allow you to analyze scenes, objects, people, and activities in pictures collected from social media.

We've only covered a few approaches to gathering useful information by monitoring broad topics. Request a free YouScan demo to uncover unexpected insights for your brand.