Background

To inform product storytelling and content creation, the Brand (redacted) Content Team wants to understand emerging trends around their industries and brand. These quarterly reports identify trends and specific conversations that inform content ideation and strategy.

Research Questions

• What topics are workers and potential customers talking about the most? What is the sentiment around those topics? 

• What matters the most to Brand customers? What are they saying about competitors? 

• What articles and content are being shared online? 

• What trends are happening in customer and worker conversation? Is conversation increasing or decreasing around certain topics? How has sentiment changed?

Stakeholders

Digital & Social Media Leaders, Strategists

Brand’s Global Digital & Social Media Team

Approach

• As the dedicated Senior Research Consultant for this client at Brandwatch, I fully execute this project each quarter and am constantly innovating to stay on top of trends.

• Reddit is the primary source of thematic inspiration due to the rich industry conversation, but Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, blogs, forums, and news pulled from BuzzSumo and Brandwatch Consumer Research are also analyzed depending on the data.

• I utilize my deep historical knowledge of the client’s brand strategy, voice, tone, priorities, products, customers, and industries combined with my expertise in social media and content marketing to recommend ideas for their channels and messaging.

Results

• Present a 30+ page deck to the key stakeholders and then again to the entire Global Digital & Social Media Team to encourage brainstorming and ideation.

• One of my recommendations earned the client their greatest organic Facebook engagement, and they’ve since spun that type of post into their quarterly brand strategy. Their HR department even incorporated the strategy on LinkedIn, and experienced similar success. Now each report is infused with an updated recommendation that’s linked to this post type.

• Breathed new life into the quarterly reports by creating an executive summary “Industry Trend Card,” and thereafter the client requested the Cards be included in all sequential Ideation reports for each industry. These cards were replicable not only across the client’s various industries, but also topically. I designed an internal teaching deck, trained the Brandwatch Professional Services Team on how to produce them, and have since serviced Beauty, Financial Services, and other industry clients on “Brand Health Cards” or “Topic Cards.”