Finding trends is pretty important to me because it helps me find niches and audiences that no one will take advantage of. I have been using a specific site to find trends in the social space, more specifically Facebook. I watch twitter and I also look at Google trends. These are very helpful when trying to find a trend to take advantage of.
I do not know why but I like utilizing Facebook a lot, it is a portal of just pure traffic. I have been using a specific site to find trends base on a keyword I type in. Today, I have decided to share this site with you. The website is called YourOpenBook.org.
This specific website looks at your search term and then searches Facebook statuses. You can see what people are talking about and if they mention something important. This is similar to twitter search and twitter trends, but it uses Facebook statuses. I am uncertain how often it updates but it does provide some value to research.
I first found this website when the craze of Facebook privacy was a HUGE issue. Also this website arise when Facebook was posting FourSquare locations - showing people their friends are not home and the opportunity to rob them. OpenBook wanted to show to Facebook users their privacy wasn't really private. It was a campaign to show everyone Facebook lacks and has privacy flaws.
Well I decided to take this website to my own marketing efforts and use it for good use. Market research.
Though this website will not search every Facebook's user status, there is still a lot of information you can pull from the search terms you put in. A lot of users has protected their profile, but a good majority still have not adjusted their profile privacy. With so many users joining Facebook on a daily basis, they will not even know what their default privacy is. So this still benefits online marketers who want to use this service as a research tool.
For example this website is great to find problematic issues and create an info product or promote a specific offer. It is about putting in the right keywords to find what you are looking for. Even finding trends and then taking advantage of that specific trend with an affiliate offer.
One other aspect I like is you can filter this website by male or female, helping you create a Facebook campaign geared towards that specific gender. With each gender you can find the right vertical to promote to that specific group of users. Gender targeting is definitely a strategy when it comes to online promotions. In any case this specific website helps you find the niche or trend which you can immediately take advantage of.
If you see a trend in twitter, do a search at OpenBook to see if users are also posting to their facebook wall. Then look at the profiles and see their interests. Now you have a targeted campaign. It is repetitive and boring to go look at every profile, but it can help with your current Facebook campaigns when trying to target specific users. Outsource this!
The website is used to show the lack of privacy, but it still provides data such as - profile interests, genders, trends, new niches, etc. Again it is how you use the website and how you look at the data. Data and information is important in any business and in life, it is how you utilize the information.
