Google trends is nothing new. But we were mightily impressed that Sky Sports have started using it to inform their news.
Usually transfer deadline day is centered around hashtags, social monitoring and listening. But this year was different. They drove news stories out of popularity comparing Manchester United's 2 major signings Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic and also featured a data breakdown of searches by country, developing interesting angles such as Jamie Vardy being the most searched player in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Zimbabwe and Bermuda.
Now even though this seems more prevalent today it's nothing new. If we conduct a quick search through Google's news archive we can see that they first utilised the tool in 2014 to data back the announcement of the new Star Wars Cast. But it seems like this is a trend that is going to be on the rise within television over the next few years.
The online footprints in the links above identify what was published online but we saw television actively reporting on interesting information, breaking down by location who searched ‘transfer deadline day’ the most, which cities were searching what player and the most searched premier league bosses.
What Does This Mean?
- News outlets are getting more savvy on digital marketing.
- News is ultimately an entertainment source now
- They can weight their news stories and coverage to see what is popular and being searched
We predict more entertainment shows will be using this tool – examples might be reality TV shows such as Big Brother, I'm A Celebrity and X Factor. If we were in charge, we certainly would be!
How Does all this Apply to Your Online Marketing?
As brands we should be ‘newsjacking’ to see what's popular and riding waves of interests.
We can also measure success and exposure through Google Trends. We can use Google trends to inform our marketing game plans – stay tuned for another post on just that!
For any more information on Google trends and how you can use it to help your marketing strategy contact our team.