As a writer my worst nightmare is the writer’s block. It kills your positive energy and destroys any hope of the creative flare that you may have otherwise unleashed. Oh yes, it can bring you down from your facebook/twitter pedestal and fill your mind with questions. Gone is the high of cheering fans, following subscribers and serial likers. You are back on terra firma with a thud.
Your red-carpet walk is over and the celebrations are, quite frankly, a bygone era. Like all artists you struggle to equal, even surpass, your best performance. A painter looks at his best drawing, a poet his finest words, a director his best movie; and they wonder. Will I be able to do this again? Was it a fluke? Was it a one-off? How you wish you could feel the pulse of the audience? How you wish you could measure the source of their desires? How you wish you could find out, what is it they want?
There is good news and the long wait is over. Gone are the days of nail-biting curiosity. Gone is the time you wished you knew and gone, is the time you thought you were gone.
Anyway the good news is called Google Insights. And yes, it works. It is not a mind reader and yet it can safely predict the audience behaviour. So the answer is you can do it scientifically and rationally. Here’s how it works. Presenting Google Insights: Find the Power of Search.
Google Insights: your search ends here
For the digital gurus out there, who know this juggernaut of all tools, we will not be starting at the very start. However, if you are relatively new to Google Insights, these three videos will get you up to speed in less than five minutes.
Marketing gurus have always used Google Insights to ascertain what people are searching for and how to modify the terms they use to the needs of their target population. It’s a powerful tool to find the most apt terms to enhance or bid on. Besides this, It is a master tool for competitive and comparative intelligence and information management — and what’s more, it actually a potent predictor of what the market seeks in different geographic regions and languages.
But let’s bring the focus back to bloggers and blogging and how we can use Google Insights as an idea box that gives us that crucial golden egg generated just in time, to help us write those blogs that are timely, relevant and have the edge to score over the competition.
How to use filters is a vast topic and an entire manual may barely suffice but let us cut to the chase. After all, we live in an era where every nano second counts. Thus, let’s focus on filters and how filter combinations work to our advantage by getting a quick insight into what our audience is searching for. Let’s zoom in on search filters.
Basically, there are four types of search filters namely: Web, Image, News, and Product. The top filter (see image below) situated in the top-right corner gives you a drop down menu to make your selection.
Web Search
Okay, here’s the scene. Heavy rains and you are nose-deep devoted to social media. The crunch is on, and you are asked for one more blog on: Facebook and security. And you’re mightily insecure. Whom you gonna call? Google Insights!
Can you get yourself to imagine what’s hot? Probably not! Try the following option:
As you can see we have narrowed our search to the U.S. last 30 days in the Social Networks and Online Communities category. The magic potion remedy is to just click on the Search button without inserting any search terms whatsoever
Hot Tip: The more hot your topic, the more filters – to narrow down the scope of (possibly, millions of) search results. Here, you can clearly apply more filters because it’s a notoriously hot and obviously popular topic. But in a niche industry, you might prefer a greater volume to choose from. You could broaden the search to worldwide, include more than 30 days of history, and use a broader category.
The results are immediate:
Please Note – the Rising searches column. The percentages show the relative increase in searches as compared to a previous identical time period. For last 30 days in the history filter, it compares search volumes to the previous month. Similarly for Last 7 days would be compared to the previous week and Last 12 months: to the previous year.
Image Search
As a photographer or a visual artist, you wanted to blog on how to capture outdoor scenes. And, you were particularly interested in urban, beach, and mountain shots, instead of the plethora of images coming out of internet’s Pandora-box. You are curious about what kind of pictures that top the popularity searches.
This is where the Image Search is extremely helpful. Generally, the best option is to limit your search to a particular geographic location, an immediate time period etc.
For the sake of an example, we go with the following options and compared the search terms beach, mountains, and city. And we further filter it to only include searches for Photo & Video Sharing.
(Images can be enlarged by clicking on them)
News Search
The following example caters to a website that sells educational toys, specializing in science toys. (I can see Sheldon Cooper jump in his Star Trek suit in the world’s favourite super-geek show: The Big Bang Theory and I start singing whole universe in hot dense state) And, as you look at your blog wondering what swings science these days? Google Insights jumps to the rescue without the Man of Steel uniform unless it is Superman Reeve’s birthday and you actually went to google search by mistake. Immediately, go back to Insights and lo! That’s your search:
The winner is…
Do not let the Perseid meteor shower dampen your spirits and make sure your opportunity is not a fleeting drizzle. Grab it with both your hands.
If you wanna kick the competition’s backpocket, you could connect a high-interest topic to something in your store. A smart businessperson could create a landing page with all the glitters and glamours: astronomy kits, telescopes, and star-gazing gadgetry that puts Bond to shame. Add special discounted offer on Groupon, another promo code on RetailMeNot and you are laughing all the way to the bank as you further optimize your landing page for an event, not just the toy. Marketing ain’t child’s play!
Product Search
You, champion, you! You are learning and learning fast and are already a tech site blogging wizard. You give people what they want, without even asking: reviews, you-name-its, comparisons, and information on the latest gadgets that have captured public attention and suddenly like a fictional protagonist you hit a wall and what’s more it rains bricks of press releases and you have the unenviable task swimming through the matrix of information and separating the wheat from the fertilizer.
Luckily, you know how to search:
And the results speak for themselves:
It’s an absolute win-win. The manufacturer is happy and all you get in return are the latest gadgets, thanks to Google Insights. It’s not a thankless world after all and that’s just my insight!
