Search giant Google has released its “Zeitgeist 2012 for Nigeria,” the list of the top search terms and trends over the last year. The list has been broken up by topic, including top keyword searches, images, people and events.
While Google’s top search terms might not directly influence your industry, don’t dismiss them altogether. Staying on top of popular or trending topics on search engines and social media can provide Nigerian business owners an opportunity to get your name out there by sharing something you already have online that meets the need of what Nigerians are discussing. Such as; a great blog post, video or presentation.
How can you monitor trending topics and make them work for your business? Here are 4 ways:
- Use social monitoring tools to keep up on what’s trending: I use hootsuite, Google news, social mention, and twitter search. These tools enable me to set up searches for keywords related to my digital marketing business, monitor searches and on what people are saying and track trending stories.
- Fish out influencers: they include local Nigerian journalist, influential bloggers and social marketers who your target audience follows. I did that this year and I got featured in a top Nigerian business newspaper, which gave my business a big boost. You can identify them by reading your favourite newspaper or news blogs, from your facebook friends, Google+ and local twitter trending topics (hashtags).
- Create content related to trending topics: as you see trends coming up daily or weekly, swing to action immediately by creating content (videos, infographs, eBooks, blog posts, photos) that address the topics in ways not available elsewhere. Then post them on your website, blog, via email, and social media sites.
If creating high-quality content regularly isn’t your style or doesn’t fit your tight schedule, one inexpensive option is to use a content marketing service such as CarolineWabara.com, which creates content (whitepaper, blog post, email copy) that are optimized for SEO and can be posted online and over social media.
- Measure Your Content Marketing’s ROI: I use Google analytics, hootsuite analytics and tweetreach to measure the traffic and reach of my content marketing efforts.
Caroline Wabara is digital marketing consultant at CarolineWabara.com, where she helps Nigerian businesses connect with their customers via social media, mobile, search and content marketing strategies. Follow her on twitter and Google+
