Adjusting to Social Search

Because search has evolved to conform to the more intuitively social way we use the web in general, we are going to need to take on a few new habits in the business context, too.

It sounds simple, but most of the time we act upon what we think people want, not what they really want. But for any company offering a product or service, knowing what people actually want is essential to keeping existing customers happy and gaining new ones. In examining the converging factors that have shaped search as we know it today, I noted that social networks and tools have created an equalization among web users, enabling anyone to broadcast their opinion to as many people as they like. This puts a lot of power in the hands of the consumer, power they are just as likely to use to trash your company when they are unhappy with your product or service as they are to praise it. In fact, most consumers are more likely to speak out when they are unhappy than when they are happy. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways for you to listen to your clients and potential clients.

Twitter Search

Twitter search is a very powerful application, one I suggest you make part of your everyday toolset. In the screenshot above, you can see that I've searched Twitter for "healthcare marketing" just to see what kind of activity those words are getting. If I worked for a marketing agency that primarily served the healthcare industry, this might be a valuable search for me to run. In fact, I might subscribe to the RSS feed for this query so that I can get updates whenever new messages on Twitter mention the words "healthcare marketing." Doing that might clue me in to the larger "conversation" around that topic, including what my competitors have to say about it. In the screenshot below, I'm using the advanced search to limit my results to only those with an indicator of unhappiness. Notice that when I do that, Twitter puts a sad emoticon in my search- you can use that modifier yourself right in the search bar if you like.

Google Alerts

Twitter is not the only place you should be listening. In addition to using Twitter's search tool, you should also be setting up Google alerts for mentions of your company or any other relevant topic in blogs. You can do this by using Google's Blog Search In the screenshot above, I'm searching for "healthcare marketing" again. Notice that I can also subscribe to an RSS feed for this query, making the search automatic. Any future matches to my query will show up in my feed reader, which saves me from having to remember to routinely search blogs for this information.

Both of these tools offer you significant value for very little effort. If you go the extra step of setting up an RSS feed for each search you might want to run routinely, you won't have to even think about this again unless you want to add a new one. I'd strongly recommend that you set at least a few of these up, including your name, your company's name, specific product or service names, etc. For more on this sort of thing, check out our newsletter on managing your online reputation.

Last month, I shared the conclusions we've come to about the right way to conceive and execute a web content strategy. Put simply, it comes down to knowing who you are speaking to. Only by clearly identifying your prospects can you go about creating content that is truly valuable to them- material that engages their need and brings them into relationship with you. Unfortunately, some of the ways that we've been handling search engine optimization have become a barrier to creating valuable content. Often, we've been writing for the sole purpose of adding indexable content to our websites. But the fact is that more web conversions (i.e. completions of calls to action) come from human referrals than from search engine traffic, particularly for B2B service firms. This means that content we write to attract search engine indexing bots may not be worth all the effort we put into creating it. Bearing this in mind, we recommend regrouping with a four-step value-oriented content strategy that includes planning with personas, writing for humans, engaging with your audience offsite, and routine measurement. If you only remember one thing about speaking to people, make it this: People trust people and people act upon trust. This principle alone should enable you to re-calibrate your content strategy so that your website speaks clearly to people.

Using third party applications is not the only way that you can better adjust to social search trends. If the principles of simplicity and conversational operations are important to the web at large, we should be applying them to how we make information available within our own websites as well. One powerful way to do this is to broaden the scope of your site's internal search tools while making them even more simple to use.

In the screenshot above, you can see how simple the site search looks on Brahmin.com. But behind the scenes, we've built a database with the user in mind- particularly how a shopper is inclined to search products. Rather than creating an advanced search with lots of category checkboxes and pulldown menus to filter search results, we've created one that dynamically responds to queries by showing results as the user types. In this image, I've searched for the word "black," which generates a list of all the black handbags in the database. If I add a modifier like "tote" or "clutch," the list will immediately shrink to only those bags that are black totes or black clutches. Each product in the database has numerous descriptors as part of their content definition that enable this kind of user interaction. The emphasis is on doing much more for the user and requiring much less of them. In terms of the social trajectory of the web in general, this type of search is an incredible emulator of human experience; you're creating a tool that is much closer to dealing directly with an informed salesperson than filling out a mechanical form.

You can learn more about this type of functionality upgrade in my newsletter on doing more with less, or Sarah Dooley's specific writeup of Brahmin's advanced product search solution I showed in the screenshot above.

As my title suggests, this is not the end of the story of search. Reviewing the short history of the web shows how quickly things change, and remarkably, how quickly we adapt to them. It would be foolish to think that the algorithmic approach of the search engines is entirely dead, as well. Google's experiment with social search doesn't necessarily represent a white flag of surrender, but more likely a coming adaptation of their own to the current environment. And that, really, is the point: even the largest, most dominant entities on the web must also submit to the inexorable progress of the web. After all, a company of 20,000, though comparatively massive as far as businesses are concerned, is nothing amidst the billions of individuals who make up the web. In the meantime, understanding the factors enabling the social thrust of the web will empower the rest of us little guys with a strong business strategy focused on to whom we really want to speak- people.