Spotting trends for a niche shop with news and Reddit

Trends start in conversations before they show in search data. For a niche shop, the useful conversations are in the news your customers read and the communities they post in.

Where to look

• news coverage of your category
• the subreddits your customers use
• RSS feeds from trade sites and favourite blogs

What to look for

• the same product or style named in several places in a week
• questions people keep asking
• complaints about something you could fix

How VirtualPA's Buzz radar helps

The Buzz section reads news from GDELT, Reddit and RSS with no key needed, and surfaces what is rising in your niche alongside your own sales. Read the dashboard tour.

Acting on a trend

1. Check you can stock it and make a margin.
2. Test with a small order.
3. Tell your list and your followers.

Posting about it on LinkedIn? Reachwyn plans a week of posts from one theme. And for the weekly numbers that tell you if it worked, see the Braivex guide to ecommerce KPIs.

Separating trends from noise

One viral post is noise. The same item coming up in news, a forum thread and a customer question in the same fortnight is a signal. Keep a short list of candidate trends and check each against your own sales and enquiries before you commit stock.

Shops with several locations can watch what customers say in Google reviews with Loculens.

More from Braivex

• ReelSieve turns an Airbnb listing link into a walkthrough video saved to your own Google Drive.
• Housieve scores London listings from Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket and Gumtree every morning.
• Loculens brings every branch's Google reviews into one dashboard, with reply drafts a person sends.
• HireSieve screens CVs for UK hiring teams, and every score quotes the CV line behind it.
• Reachwyn plans a week of LinkedIn posts in your own voice, and nothing publishes until you approve it.

Read more guides on the Braivex blog.