NEW YORK—Porter Novelli has launched TrendingTarget, a social media analytics tool designed to reveal the full breadth of topics that a target audience is discussing online in real time. The tool delivers a visual representation of all of the conversations taking place across a specific audience. Rather than filtering for keywords, TrendingTarget employs a dynamic technology to listen and report on any and all topics that the audience is talking about.

According to Porter Novelli, the resulting data can be used for strategic decision making, communications planning, community management and content development efforts.

“Many companies and brands today monitor conversations in social media to hear what is being said about them,” says the firm. “But until now, it has been difficult to listen to and analyze what else their target may be talking about. These opinions, trends and ideas may not relate specifically to a brand or product, but knowing what else is important to a target audience can help engage and influence them more effectively.”

Gary Stockman, CEO, Porter Novelli says: “With TrendingTarget we can quickly analyze the wide range of interests of an audience and learn what’s meaningful to them right now, so we can create programs that will influence them to take action on behalf of a brand or organization.”

TrendingTarget currently uses Twitter as the basis for conversation analysis, with other inputs to follow. The service works by gathering all Tweets from an audience that has been defined by publicly available social identities and other interest-based markers, and using text mining tools to uncover velocity and acceleration patterns in their public conversations—such as discussion of common interests, competitive brands or newly popular hash tags—to identify actionable trends.