We are pleased to announce the winner of our use-case Dashboard competition: the Trends Dashboard, designed by Nathaniel Hansen of The Socializers.

All users can now access this fantastic new addition to the Brandwatch platform which joins the Influencers, PR and Reputation Management Dashboards released in July. Got a question for Nathaniel or a suggestion for the next Dashboard? Join the discussion at the Brandwatch Community Forum.

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How we chose the winner

We had some excellent and varied entries to the competition.

We were particularly excited by this idea because it truly extends the scope of what it is possible to do with Brandwatch data and technology, and of course ‘Going Beyond’ is a key theme of our new mission.

As well as ‘watching brands’, Brandwatch can be used to track and analyze important topics that relate to your organization.

Keeping on top of key trends, knowing the relevant people and detecting valuable marketing moments can help you pro-actively reach out and expand your brand awareness where it matters most.

We caught up with Nathaniel to ask him how he came up with the winning entry.

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What Nat does, and where he does it

 

Nat: I am a research consultant from The Socializers, an agency currently working on contract with Clarks shoes at their HQ in the UK and actively working with their various silos and global regions to implement social listening.

I have recently also set up a Brandwatch Vizia listening hub for Clarks.

My day-to-day work involves analysis of online conversation using the Brandwatch Analytics and Vizia solutions, writing insights reports, creating Dashboards for stakeholders and testing new and innovative ways to use social listening for brands.

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The inspiration behind the Trends Dashboard

Nat: I was working with Clarks shoes on their social listening hub and the request came in for a trends report.

I spent a fair amount of time gathering influential Twitter accounts related to media, fashion, tech and, in particular, fashion tech – I wanted to see what the latest topics were within this milieu.

For instance, I applied a “fashion tech” Query to the Trends Dashboard and was able to see images, mentions and individual Twitter authors talking about “fashion tech” or using the hashtag #fashiontech.

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The main use-case for this Dashboard

Nat: While a single sheet PDF full of insights is helpful, the provision of a refined Dashboard provides current and actionable insight on-the-fly.

The days of static reports are passing and stakeholders at brands are increasingly curious about how to efficiently view and act upon real-time social data.

Many years ago, I turned in long reports with extensive appendices full of mentions. Now, the Trends Dashboard can provide brand teams with the right info at the right time.

For example, we can quickly discover key influencers in the fashion blogging world for content teams to work with or we can emphasize the need to participate in a specific trend during a global sales event for regional stakeholders.

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“From strategic planning to product development, trends inform the whole business. The trends dashboard will enable us to identify and monitor trends in real time and serve up, through a dashboard or Vizia screens, insights directly to the people who can act on them.”

Stuart Diamond, Global Brand Insights Manager, C&J Clark International

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Who Nat sees using the Trends Dashboard

Nat: The Trends Dashboard could be used by think tanks, lobbyists, policy makers, insights teams at brands, designers, marketing agencies, research centers, political parties, journalists, PR agencies, defense departments, intelligence agencies, anyone!

Imagine what an educator could do with the Trends Dashboard to prove their theory about better education.

Imagine what an energy planner could do with the trends dashboard to help humanity avoid a future catastrophe related to energy usage.

Imagine what a designer could come up with through finding a unique selling proposition hidden within the Trends Dashboard.

Imagine how a political party could gain an edge in an election.

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Ideas Nat’s had for successive iterations of the Trends Dashboard

I have been studying specific hashtags using Brandwatch and looking at the root or earliest instances of the use of these hashtags.

Specifically, I’ve been studying the individuals who “gave birth” to specific hashtags, in Twitter and Instagram.

I am looking for the reasons why these authors used these hashtags. One way to see this is to actually see what these authors were talking about in the weeks leading up to the first use of a specific hashtag. Who were they talking to? Where were they traveling/working? Who where they quoting or re-tweeting or sharing in their own feeds?

In successive Trends Dashboards, I’d love to find a method for seeing the birth of trends through analysis of “first usage” of topics or hashtags.

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What does it show?

There are five tabs in the Trends Dashboard.

• Trending: Now React quickly to valuable marketing and PR opportunities as they happen. Instantly turn your Query into a real-time trend detection and analysis Dashboard. Track key topics or industries or monitor a specific hashtag or event to follow the most relevant conversations going on in the last 6 hours.
• Trending: 7 Days You can also take a broader look at the influencers, sub-topics and important discussions that shape and inform your trends. See a breakdown of the conversation over the last week, and use these insights to develop your longer-term strategies and campaigns.
• Twitter Buzz Twitter is often where stories start trending first and it’s where influencers can really make a name for themselves.  This Tab shows everything that is going on in the Twittersphere in the last day or over the last week.
• Categories If you haven’t tried creating Categories in Analytics yet, this Tab will show you the sort of things you can achieve with this excellent feature.  Segment your data and compare the sub-topics within your trend and see how their peaks compare over time.
• Around the World This Tab offers a truly global view of your trends.  Understand where in the world the conversation is focused and compare the key themes being talked about in different regions. For instance, you could try using new ‘Ignore Language’ Queries to collect mentions of a global hashtag, regardless of which languages people are speaking, and see how it is being used internationally to discover opportunities in new markets.

Log in to Brandwatch Analytics to start using the Trends Dashboard now, or get in touch with us to find out more.

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