Trend for Lady Gaga in the Last 12 Months
Google Trends is mana from research heaven. It might be addictive fun for research types, but for radio, in the all-important daily ritual of remaining relevant and topical it is a great health check for content programming. Whether you do Newscasts, or content throughout the morning or day, finding what is engaging to media consumers is the business we are all in. Do some research: google.com/trends
Take a look at what your morning show was talking about this morning and compare it to what people are searching for online. How well do these match up? Now, take a look at what your talent talks about in pop culture news and search for trends on that. Is it relevant? Are they talking about the most relevant artists / topics / ideas? Are they posting comments about these things on Twitter or Facebook? As a talent coach and advocate for your team, turn them on to connecting with what is “trending” and making that their playbook for developing content.
There are so many interesting topics being searched online that I am amazed many more shows don’t put their ‘finger on the pulse’ of what information people are consuming and turning this into fodder and PPM ratings!
Betty White Trend Leading up to her 90th Birthday.
Getting into the heads of media consumers to see the fluxuations in their interest over time let’s you surf the bigger waves. Imagine the graph above being reflective of a PPM or a diary… Powerful stuff! Once you get totally hooked on trends, dig in a little deeper with Google Insights and you will be amazed how you can fine tune the info you want to see.