Learning to run any business is a trial all in itself. But running an innovative business will consume your entire life. Making sure that you are on top of everything in terms of your practices, as well as making sure that your company is retaining a sense of innovation, is all about keeping ahead of the curve. This means you have got to inform yourself to identify potential opportunities at every turn. But while this is easier said than done, what are the things that we can all do to build into our working day?
The Importance Of A News Feed
From social media to the tabloids, you’ve got to get into the habit of scanning the relevant and trending topics. This is especially true if you’re working in a specific industry. If you are working in the auto industry and you are not keeping abreast of auto industry news, what are you doing instead? It sounds like common sense, but when you start to get into the habit of compiling what is going on right now and using this to inform your business, it becomes a practice that you look back on and wish you started earlier.
Using Trade Journals
For many people, this is a very antiquated approach. But trade journals are still one of the best approaches to learning about a specific industry. Depending on the industry you operate in, there are certain journals that are invaluable, but there are also some which are irrelevant. Making the time to go through these publications is crucial. Likewise, subscribing to consumer magazines is something that can inform your approach to running a business. Every piece of information is vital even if you are reading consumer magazines for fun because it can spark a new insight or springboard yourself into a new direction.
Finding The Right Workers
It’s not exclusively your responsibility. If you’ve got a good team, they will be able to keep their eyes and ears to the ground. But rather than finding people who are naturally inclined to trendspotting, you could start to encourage this approach with your existing teams. You could very easily start an email thread where people can share interesting or insightful articles. When this becomes a well-worn habit, you can implement regular team meetings to dissect this information.
The Benefit Of SEO
This is something that we can all leverage in order to keep ahead of specific trends. When people are looking for something on search engines it’s very likely a current trend. Taking the opportunity to use an SEO tool to enter keywords associated with your specific industry can help to identify specific patterns. There are going to be certain topics that might not be popular right now but may very well be soon. This can help you to identify a gap in the market.
It’s a lot of hard work to keep yourself ahead of the trends. And this is why you cannot underestimate the older methods as well. Keeping an eye on your competitors and networking effectively can give you the opportunity to spot what people are doing in addition to various in-house approaches.
