There are plenty of sources to receive information and to track trends. I think that it is a matter of choosing what works best for you and your website or business, and most importantly how easy you find these tools and sources are to navigate.
After testing out different tools and sources, I found that my favourite social media trend listening and monitoring tools are Google Trends and Twitter trends. While working on my own personal book blog that I started recently, I found these two tools to be extremely useful. Even when I was doing research for Social Media Monitoring and Measurement, I found Google Trends to have a lot of valuable information when searching for brand competitors and what other people online were searching for. This helped me figure out what I should be talking about and how to differentiate myself from the competition and to stand out.
The first source that I easily get my news and updates from is Twitter (I always fact check before I dive in to the topics, though). Once I can confirm that the topics are legitimate, I find it so easy to swipe through and see what people are saying about the topics. This is where I find most of my up-to-date information, especially during COVID-19, about the pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, police brutality, and other important movements and information that news channels on television or online might not be telling us. Although Twitter can be useful at times, it has its downfalls. Recently, a young woman came forward about Hollywood star Ansel Elgort and how he sexually assaulted her. Not too long after that, someone made fake Twitter accounts and falsely accused the cast of Riverdale for sexual assault. Their names were trending on Twitter, but it was then confirmed that this person created a fake Twitter account just to get attention. This is when fact checking Twitter trends comes into play for me.
The second news source that I get my news and updates from is very simple: CP24. As anticlimactic as that sounds, I find that CP24 has constant and accurate updates on numerous topics and I followed it closely during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It does not just cover local news but it also reports on global events, celebrity and entertainment content, and other current events.
I find that simple and easily accessible sites and sources work best for me, and so far, have proven themselves effective. What sources do you like to use?
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 