As a marketer, you probably spend all day thinking about brands. But your customers don’t. That means that to connect with people, you have to understand where your brand fits into their lives.

YouTube is an increasingly important reflection of these cultural waters. That’s why we can all learn a great deal by spotting trends. YouTube cultural trends and the world of marketing is quite more directly related than you can imagine, with trends on YouTube driving trends in the commercial world.

You can spot YouTube trends in a couple of ways:

• One involves looking at the videos people are talking about most.

• ‎Another approach is to start with YouTube creators, many of whom are among the most influential people in the entertainment world. Look for commonalities across the videos they’re making, the tags they’re using, and the creative approaches they’re taking.

• Last but not the least is to look for trends in the content that regular people are creating. By monitoring which topics are generating lots of uploads, you can uncover rising trends.

It might not be the most sophisticated trend-mining system, but I’ve found that starting with a simple approach is best.