How Google Trends can help you find your muse
“I DON'T SET TRENDS. I JUST FIND OUT WHAT THEY ARE AND EXPLOIT THEM.”
The Google Trends application might be a great way for you to find the inspiration that you need in order to make a creative connection. By listing what is hot right now , and showing you what has been hot before, this handy web app can give you great ideas on which creative direction you want to head in.
Trendy Tools
Do you know what’s hot right now? (Not my Coffee)
Do you what celebrity is in the spotlight? (I like that Brando fellow)
Do you know what news story is everyone talking about? (Is it something about oil?)
Do you keep up with the latest fashion, or are you someone who still dresses like you did in high School? (Hey: Jeans and T-shirts is considered the classic look)
Are you the kind of person who does not pay attention to the current music scene? (Lady-who?”)
In order to find your muse, it is important to be able to tap into the public consciousness and know what others are currently interested in. Ask yourself why you pursue your creativity and you will probably find “to connect with others” somewhere in that answer. While some artists prefer to keep their work to themselves, most of us like to use our creative gifts as a way to interact with others. Our books, paintings, sculptures, and films become bridges that help us get our ideas across.
In order to make this connection, it helps to know what everyone is excited about. Knowing what is on people’s minds can help you use your creativity in order to comment on the current state of affairs. Keeping in touch with current trends can help give you ideas on how to steer your latest creative project in order to find an audience.
Google Trends is place you can go to see what the world was interested in at any given moment. Using a secret algorithm that someone like me has no business going into detail about, Google Trends has the ability to not only list the world’s most popular search topics on any given day, it is also capable of telling you the popularity trend of any keyword that you enter into it. It is a tool that can give you insight into the public consciousness and clue you in on the latest trends and ideas that people are talking about.
For example:
Let us say that you are looking for your muse in order to come up with a great Halloween costume that will top everyone else at the party. Not having the time to whip up something straight out of Hogwarts and not wanting to go as the same thing you did last year, you decide to check out the trends to see if you can come up with a good idea. You notice that a certain rock star celebrity that you kind of look like is “hot” at the moment thanks to an appearance on a reality show. An idea pops into your head, and after a wig and a little makeup, you are set to knock them out at the party.
While this example is a bit silly, it gives you a good idea on how you can use trends to make a comment. By checking out what is going on in the world, and what people find interesting, you can help shape your creative idea into something people will also want to talk about.
Blogging Trends
As a blogger, I know the importance of tapping into trends. If I want people to find my blog, I need to be able to tap into the keywords that people like to search. Even if I am writing about a particular niche, such as home coffee roasting, I need to know what stuff people like to read about when they are browsing for coffee related posts.
For example, I can go to Google trends and type in “coffee” getting a list of the latest hot stories that include the term. I find that everyone is looking up stories about a release of new type of gourmet instant coffee and decide to get some for myself and write a review on it in my blog. By using Trends, I found a subject matter that not only interests me, but also might appeal to the coffee swilling, blog reading public. By writing a review of the new product, I might be able to snare a few more readers that find my thoughts on this topic interesting and come back to read some more.
