How To Break Through the Personalization Filter

Share this blog:
Share

This is a live blog post from the Online Marketing Summit (#OMSummit) presented by Katherine Watier Ong (@kwatier) of Ketchum.com

social media and search break through

The Most Important Transition: Google moved from keyword based results to entities and connections based on results.

Google +’s purpose is not to be a social network. It’s not there to compete against Facebook or twitter. It’s there to identify and help Google understand your connections and entity. Think of it like that, not as a social network, but an opportunity to rank more strongly in search.

Search results are now becoming so smart that Google’s figuring out how all your connections work to feed you only the most relevant content specific to you (and your connections, interests, etc). This works especially well when you are logged into google. This is powered by your Google Data (check your dashboard and update your Google account so your search results are most relevant to your personal interests and connections).

There are 40 personalization factors (check out this link for a full list:

Bing Search 2012

Bing is similar to Google, but has interesting integration features with Facebook and Twitter.  You can ask your friends questions dirtily from search. Bing’s results are powered by your Microsoft data.

Personalization on Facebook

Hop on the Beta Facebook Graph Search to be one of the first to experience the direction of personalization. It will also help you figure out personalized data about other people.

Personalization on Twitter

They are in the game too!. This includes your connections, how strong they are, signals you have, recognition of your gender and show feeds most related to you, etc.

Removing Search Personalization

Think about your underlying assumption…. when you non-perslnzed the search results, are you going to see what your target audience sees?

Ask people to send you a screenshot of the same keyword for fun to see the different personalized results they get in Google. 🙂

But the question is, how do you break through the personalization as a marketer?

Create Personas for your Target Audience

  • Demographics
  • Job Level
  • Pain Points
  • Obejctions to attitude chage
  • Routine for a typical day
  • Level of sophistication with technology
  • Online information sources / social networks

Conversion through Conversation – ask questions and find solutions related to the immediate situation and need of your audience.

Create content for your target audience. That content should focus on their needs, desires, emotional motivators, etc.

  • Use all the social buttons on your site
  • Google + !!
  • Use rel=author and other schema markup to increase CTR, build up the Author Rank and following of your company’s thought leaders.
  • Create a surround sound of social media mentions around your target audience.
  • Create and promote high quality content regularly that matches your audiences’s needs.

Intercept them during a prime moment. 76% of online adults it the US have clicked on links to related stories. “There is no arguing good content is in high demand. Consumers spend more than seven hours per week actively looking for it, viewing up to four articles before they make a buying decision.”

Measure  to see if it’s working. Google searches / mo compared to your analytics traffic by keyword. Social media monitoring to view an increase in volume around your brand name and products.

UserTesting.com – this helps you figure out what your audience is doing. Easy and extremely useful.

Key Takeaways

  • Know your customer. Use their language.
  • Have them test your message
  • Create search personas and measure against assumptions
  • Provide online content that is quality and shareable
  • Build social communities around your brand – especially