Why Monitor Search trends?

Aside from the regular news of your own community (which is by far the most important information your paper can ever report, there are other features and bits of material you will want to publish.  You no doubt are familiar with the many kinds of features found in daily newspapers, magazines and even in TV news broadcasts.

Advice columns, religious columns, family and home columns, science or medical news, health information, puzzles, various kinds of humor, and other special features help to round out any publication.  Such material will make your paper more generally interesting, so long as it is not taken over by such material.

But what, specifically, are people looking for?  What kinds of trivia or items of general interest should you bother to include? 

It pays to know what people are interested in, what kinds of things they want to know more about, and what sort of information bits will best serve your readership.  No matter how busy you are, you will be wise to keep up with the regional and national news.  You can watch local TV news broadcasts, scan radio broadcasts that serve your area, and make an effort to listen to more than the kinds of broadcasts you yourself find interesting.

The Internet will serve you well in this regard.  You can scan news and features from just about every source, and use such data to guide you in selecting the kinds of things you include in your own local publication.  Pay close attention to the feedback you get from readers.  Try to remain balanced in your selections.  While it may be great fun to use your paper to promote a specific political or philosophical viewpoint, you will actually serve your area better by offering genuine news and information from as broad a range of sources and positions as possible.  You need not endorse every oddball idea or make light of it.  Just report what is going on, what is said and thought, what this or that group claims to believe.

Want to know what people want to know?  Want to see what folks are thinking about, wondering about?  Take time to scan the search trends.  Major search engines report the trends and hottest topics of a given time period.  Yahoo! offers a good variety of lists (such as the above "Overall" list of searches), and Google Trends gives a comprehensive history of trends in searches.  Good tools for the news publisher.

Obviously, people tend to look for more data on major events and news topics being reported in the media.  Celebrities are a big part of what people talk about and want to stay up on.  But a student of such searches will soon begin to see other patterns as well.  Health information, for example, is an item of constant interest, as well as new gadgets and other new products (including shoes, movies and music). 

By keeping yourself informed, you will be able to better choose topics for local review and editorials, or even to use in developing new columns for the paper.  Adding bits of insight and news on a variety of current topics will help to make your paper one of the first things people read, and something they will tend to keep around the house or office or waiting room.  And this will help to serve your advertisers, by making their ads more a part of the community life.

Jim