Real-Time Web ’trend’ search on the Internet has definitely arrived, and it presents some excellent viable opportunities for those who are involved in promoting websites or blogs, or those involved in content marketing. So if you are wanting to tap into the power of what the ’Real-time Web,’ has to offer, you will have to track the various resources available, to monitor the online search topics which are happening right now, at this moment.
Keep in mind that using the real-time Web for your online content marketing efforts may be a bit of a ‘Catch-22’ situation. By the time you are able to analyze, and then capitalize on a particular trend that you are chasing, it may have already passed on by and faded. This may leave you with content that may not have any relevance on your site or the Web. There are obviously worse things than having unique web content on your site, whether its relevant or not. To make sure that you spend your marketing efforts wisely, focus on the immediate trends that you know that are generating attention right now, that also has a chance of sustainability, and then act quickly on it.
How To Find Current Trends For Your Real-Time Content Marketing Efforts
The major search engines themselves will provide you with the best indication of what is currently occurring on the real-time Web. The most obvious and well know is Google’s ‘Hot Trends’, which will provide you with an hourly update on the most popular current searches. But a better source may be the ‘Rising Searches’ feature found on Google Insights for Search. This will serve you much better in the long run.
Google Insight will enable you to filter search results based on the exact type of recent searches by their users. This includes: web searches, image searches, current news or product searches etc,. You can also break down results by: location, category, or a specific time-frame such as searches based on the ‘last seven days’ or the ‘past five years’ for example.
Real-Time Search Engines
Other search engines that you can use for tracking immediate content that’s searched on a ‘real-time’ bases include: Yahoo’s Buzz Index, as well as Bing’s xRank.
Doing a Blog Search will also provide a viable avenue to gain insight on what searchers are looking for on the real-time Web. Google and their Blog Search feature has a ‘Hot Queries’ section located in the right-hand sidebar.
IceRocket.com’s Trend Tool feature provides an extremely valuable way for search marketers to track how a specific search term may trend over time. Blogpulse.com also has a similar type of service to IceRocket in this regard.
The Social Networks In Real-Time
Facebook, as well as Twitter are two valuable resources in which you can get an exact snapshot glimpse of what’s happening on the real-time Web. One excellent example is Twitter’s popular Trending Topics, as well as third-party related services such as: TwitScoop, Trendistic, and Tweetmeme.
When it comes to finding what’s hot and trending on Facebook, there are a few ’up-and-coming’ websites, which include: ItsTrending, Boohsaka, Kurrently, FacePinch and Open Book.
The Internet itself also has hundreds upon hundreds of social media related Web services that actively tracks and mentions current trends. Some of the most popular ones include: Social Mention’s Trends feature, as well as Addict-o-matic and their Popular News section. Digg also has a ’Popular items on Digg’ feature, as does Reddit. Two others worth mentioning are Delicious and their Hotlist and POPURLs.