When should brands jump in? Knowing when to take new entrants seriously.

Something becomes truly popular when it becomes interesting to those who don’t particularly care.

‘What if we are wrong’ by Chuck Klosterman

There’s no shortage of new ideas and trends, but which ones should you invest in?

We all know the language of how ideas spread, the early adopters, the mainstream, the laggards; but the way we think about it needs a reboot.

When we hear about early adopters we tend to assume someone young(ish), someone techy. The internet and social media have made a nonsense of this. We can all be early adopters, innovators or laggards. It just depends on our interests and how we choose to spend our time.

The biggest challenge to market growth is how to get something new to appeal to a mainstream audience who isn’t really that interested. Most innovations fail to make it big, but it can work and social shows us when it does.

Social media captures how early adopters spend their time engaging with innovators, and each other, about their passions. Between them, they’re creating the social content that the rest of us see when it suddenly becomes relevant. Surprise hits don’t just happen.

Here’s the opportunity for brands

You can use Social Learning to identify, understand and track how thousands of these conversations develop and change over time, across the world. Handy for spotting gaps in consumer needs or knowing when it’s time to take a competitor seriously.

Next steps?

We work with organisations across a wide range of sectors in domestic and international markets. Get in touch if you’d like to chat about how to use social data to spot new market threats and opportunities.