5 Free Trend Tracking Tools To Help Your Brand Stay On Top Of The Game
Trend tracking helps businesses in different ways. Learn how Stillio's automated screenshots can make the process even better.
You can't be on social media platforms 24/7, no matter how much you wish to. So how will you figure out what is trending right now?
Here is a masterlist of trend tracking tools so that you always stay at the top of your game for all your communications.
The top free trend tracking tools to find popular content
Google Trends
That is one of the best free trend tracking tools. Google Trends is the first that comes to any content creator's mind when tracking trends.
Here, you can look for a certain topic or query in the search bar and see its evolution in search volume over time, filtering by category, location, or web search. You will also see a list of related terms to generate new content ideas and compare research volume evolution between different terms.
Google trends also have a trending search page showing popular terms and real-time searches. That is also the home for Year In Search, an initiative by Google where they show the most searched for topics each year. You can see search results dating as far back as 2008.
If you'd like to get the most out of this tool, check out our soon-to-follow article on Google Trends.
Trends map
As the name suggests, the main feature of Trends Map is a world map that aggregates the hottest terms according to region. You can zoom in or out on each region, country, city, or continent to find a wide range of relevant hashtags or search terms. Trends Map is mostly used to see Twitter trends.
Besides the map, you can visit its Local Feature, choose a city and get a list of its most popular hashtags, topics, and tweets. That is a pretty useful feature on how to track trends.
These features are all free. A paid version also shows you trend analysis, dashboards, and alerts.
Social Media trending pages
That is a 3-in-1 recommendation. Some of the most popular social media platforms have trending pages showing the most relevant content for their audiences.
YouTube trending:
See the most-watched videos in your region. The YouTube trending page will help you detect popular music, what brands collaborate with which celebrities, hot topics for your audience, and rising influencers.
Twitter trending topics:
This Twitter section gives you all the trending topics for the platform, with relevant news related to each topic. You can click on each keyword to see more news or top tweets.
Pinterest trends:
That is a relatively new tool but is great for trend tracking. Pinterest trends greet you with some popular topics and give you the chance to run a search. Similar to Google Trends, it shows its search volume evolution over time. You can also compare terms and get related topics. If, however, you are outside the US, UK, or Canada, this may not be available to you. Try the Today tab to see popular topics for each day.
Feedly
Did you know that you can have your personalized newspaper? That is what Feedly does! You can add your preferred sources to this RSS feed, and it will provide a wide range of curated articles for you to browse. Feedly is powered by an AI named Leo.
Leo can be trained by indicating liked articles and topics to make the list more precise. This way, you'll be able to track popular topics across the web without checking every individual source.
Feedly also offers a Chrome extension that allows you to quickly save articles for later and add websites to your feed.
With the free Feedly plan, you can add up to 100 sources and organize them in 3 folders. You can upgrade for more sources and features starting at $6 per month.
Exploding Topics
It's raining topics! On the homepage of Exploding Topics, you can filter per timelapse and category. That will give you a massive list of keywords. Click on each word to see the search volume and related terms.
You might need more context on each word since the homepage itself doesn't say much, but you can get a quick overview of popular topics.
Honorable mentions
These aren't strictly trend-tracking tools, but they are useful in knowing what people are talking about right now.
- Digg: This is a curated feed of popular news topics. The Explore option contains a wide range of categories, including a trending one, which lets you see popular trends and news around the globe.
- Reddit: Almost all of us know what Reddit is. It is a conversational social forum where people from all over the world get together and discuss different topics. You can click on its homepage and see what's trending. From international news to the latest movies, everything is available on Reddit. If you have any questions to ask, you can do so here.
- Quora: Quora is the most popular question-answer tool on the internet. You can see what's trending right now and what people are curious about. If you have a question, you can ask people, and if you have any answer to a particular question, you can post it.
Trend tracking with Stillio
There are many different ways to track trends without checking news sites or social platforms all the time. But this will require much manual work. Luckily for you, Stillio makes this task much easier.
With Stillio, the entire process can be automated. With automated trend tracking, you can capture screenshots daily, weekly, or monthly. You can even set the frequency to 5 mins! In addition, you can take full-page screenshots of particular web pages and save them directly on your Dropbox or Google Drive folders. Check Stillio whenever you want, and all your information will be saved safely. Pricing starts at $29/m for daily screenshots of 5 URLs.
Conclusion
Tracking trends is now much easier than you think! With the right tools, you can now easily see what people are discussing to feed your marketing strategies—chosen your favorite tool yet? Book a demo with Stillio to see how it can help you track everything!