trends
Why Use Google Insights?
Google Insights is a great tool for market research. It can be used to identify the popularity of search terms (keywords) used on Google and any trends for specific search terms.
On the Google Insights website, you can select one of three ways to search: by search terms, by locations or by time ranges. You can then select filtering options to narrow down your search results. Below are two scenarios to help illustrate why you might use Google Insights for market research.
Scenario 1
You own a specialty mittens shop in Vancouver, British Columbia and you plan to launch your online marketing plan. However, you aren’t quite sure when to start advertising. If you start advertising too early in the year, you risk wasting your budget because no one is looking for mittens yet. If you advertise too late, you risk missing out on potential customers. What do you do?
A quick search on Google Insights by Search Terms reveals Google searches for mittens begin to pick up in September. This may provide more insight on when you should start your online marketing strategy.
Scenario 2
You are planning to create a new recreational website targeting people living in British Columbia, Canada. However, you don’t know what recreational activities British Columbian are most interested in. What do you do?
A quick search on Google insights by Locations reveals the top searches in the recreation category, in BC are:
- bike
- fishiing
- bikes
- boats
- horse
- patters
- bicycle
- horses
- crafts
- paintball
With this information, you might decide to focus on creating a niche website for bicycle enthusiasts or a website for fishing enthusiasts.
Once again, Google offers valuable information. You just need to know where to look.
Victor
Tags: google, insights, market research, mittens, trends, Vancouver, victor
Are Online “Communities” Inspiring Real World Connections?
This past weekend, I indulged in lattes and newspapers. Everywhere I looked, alongside articles about Twitter and Facebook, there were stories about people craving connections with one another in the real world — the rise of community gardens, secret yoga gatherings, communal screenings of the “Lost” finale. In an interview with the Globe & Mail, Christopher Hawkins, founder of www.sharingbackyards.com said it best, ”people are starting to see it’s not a big deal to be connecting with strangers.”
Feels like a tipping point. But why now? Are we just coming out of our cocoons realizing that it’s sort of a drag there’s no church on Sundays, regretting that we traded the pub on Thursday night for a brisk walk on the sea wall?
A few years ago, Patrick West wrote a fascinating book called, Conspicuous Compassion. West theorized that our public displays of emotion (wearing ribbons, joining rallies, laying flowers to mark the death of a celebrity) are an expression of our desire to connect. “We desperately seek a common identity and new social bonds to replace those that have withered in the post-war era.”
I have to wonder if the Internet, that frontier land of random connection, has allowed us to test drive these bonds, permitting us to reach out in an environment where the risk of rejection is mitigated by scale and anonymity. Might the world wide web have readied us to reach out to our real world neighbours? Wouldn’t that be rich?
So much of what is happening in the social media sector is cloud shoveling. Self declared thought leaders. “Benevolent” geeks building “safe” neighbourhoods that compromise our security and disrespect our very identify.
Might the greatest output of all that computing power, plastic and fibre wind up being the imperative it is creates in us to venture next door and invite our neighbour over for a cup of tea?
- Moyra
Tags: communities, Social Media, social networking, trends
