Blondes ARE the most popular…

I’ll be honest, we’re an odd species.  People, that is.  Though anyone can easily determine this through 15 minutes of people watching at your local mall, it’s much more obvious (and entertaining) when faced with the ‘evidence’.  But I digress…

I like to waste time.  But really, “waste” is relative.  Others might say I’m wasting time, I say I’m doing research.  One of my newest ways to do … research, is by making use of my keyword tool.

Wordtracker, if you don’t already know what it is, is a keyword script that allows you to see how often different keywords are searched in the search engines.  As with any keyword tool, it has its limitations.  For the most part though, it gets the job done. 

Keyword searches and why they’re damn cool.

In a nutshell, Wordtracker lets you see how ‘popular’ a keyword or phrase is (how often it’s searched) and how much competition (webpages) are fighting for the top search engine spots for that term.  If you’re researching a new market, etc, it’s pretty handy.  However, it also holds some unique entertainment value. 

At first glance, you might think – Great, it lets you see what people are searching for – good for marketing and that’s about it. Au contraire, this little $300/year tool has the potential to give you hours of entertainment.  With the right touch, it can provide insight into our values, our culture, what we like, what we dislike and the ‘human condition’ as a whole.  Sound like a mouthful?  Let me explain…

It’s 3 AM, I’m in my underwear and I’m searching for…

 We can essentially look at Wordtracker as a social experiment that gives insight into what people are ACTUALLY like. Why?  For the most part, people are not impeded by what they search for.  It’s social pressure that causes us to conform.  No people around, less pressure, more freedom.  Alone, late at night and with nothing but our imagination to stop us, our interests, oddities and quirks can run wild.  Using a tool like Wordtracker allows us to see a few things that we ordinarily wouldn’t be granted access to – what people really want.  Plus, it can answer some very profound questions.  Like what sport is REALLY the most popular.

According to what we search for online, we’re most interested in the least consequential stuff.  The world is at our fingertips and what do we grasp for?  Most often, a Kleenex.  However, our vices aside, this tool can be good at determining what people actually care about.

 Is this full-proof?

Of course not.  But it can still be quite interesting.  Here are some questions and the answers that 15 minutes of keyword lookups can get you …

Is porn really THAT popular?
Everyone knows that the internet is big for porn.  But did you know that porn related searches comprise 11 out of the top 20 searches?  That means sex comprises 55% of our most popular searches.  Hell, even “youporn” is searched more than “youtube”.  No wonder we’re at 6 billion and growing.

What’s the most popular sport?  The official list (plus number of searches)
football – 15,724
soccer – 11,495
basketball – 10,222
baseball – 6,854
tennis – 3,476
gymnastics - 2,557
cricket (can also include searches for the bug) – 2,542
hockey – 2,521
rugby – 2,359
boxing – 2,119

What’s the most popular hair color?
blonde – 12,559
redhead – 8,723
brunette – 6,804

What religion is generating the most interest?
islam – 3,524
buddhism – 2,877
hinduism – 2,314
christianity – 2,133

Karl Marx was wrong.  It’s TV, not religion.
“Dancing with the Stars” is searched more than “art”, “science”, “history” and “religion”… combined.

Favorite news sources.
“Naked news” is the most searched news source, followed by fox, the bbc and cnn.

Boy or girl?
“Baby boy names” and related keywords are searched over 10 times more often than “baby girl names”.

Who’s the most popularly searched celebrity? (currently) …
Vanessa Hudgens

Eh…
“Google” is the 4th most searched term, worldwide. 
(Admittedly, this may be due to the placement of toolbar search boxes.)

Given all the possibilities in the world, what do people want to learn how to do?
how to save a life – 4,088 (related to the song, I’m sure)
how to have sex – 2,767
how to masturbate – 1,955 (destined for greatness, we are)

Who’s the most popular designer?
gucci 1,109
ralph lauren 907
versace 518
christian dior 304
giorgio armani 131

Sure, they’re cute but…
“Pictures of cats” is the most popularly searched image related term.  By a LOT.

Let the numbers speak for themselves.
“Hentai” (otherwise known as cartoon porn) is the 9th most searched keyword worldwide. 

“Preteen” and related keywords make up 7 of the top 1000 searched keywords, “preteen” itself currently appearing as the 54th most searched word worldwide.

Does Wordtracker have predictive power?

The jury’s out on this one.  But, just for fun lets compare the democratic and republican candidates and their respective searches…

Democratic candidates:
hillary clinton – 3,718
barack obama – 2,332
john edwards – 1,629
dennis kucinich – 707
bill richardson – 446
joe biden – 341
mike gravel – 269
christopher dodd – 84

Republican candidates:
ron paul 6,982
fred thompson 3,703
mike huckabee 1,383
mitt romney 1,272
john mccain 770
rudy giuliani 768
duncan hunter 550
tom tancredo 270

We, of course, need to take into account the idea that the more outlandish and outspoken a candidate is, the more press and searches they’ll get.  This can confound predictions.  However, I wouldn’t count this method out as a loose predictor of who may win an election.

Investment potential?

Who knows, maybe it exists somewhere and I just haven’t run across it yet.  But I believe that if used and tracked correctly, the terms people search for can tell us where trends are emerging (before the ‘masses’ realize it), what companies to invest in and what markets are gaining popularity.

A tool, like wordtracker, that not only tracks ALL searched terms, but alerts the user to new searches and terms that are seeing a rise in searches could be very powerful.  Searched terms could be tracked like stocks, but instead of prices, we’d focus on the number of searches.  The business and investment potential here may be worth exploring.  

One more example for you.  Box office earnings.  I’d be willing to bet there’s a strong correlation between opening weekend box office earnings and the number of searches a movie receives in the week prior.  Track weekend earnings for different earnings and compare to number of searches.  Figure out the correlation and this can be another way for production companies to predict earnings. 

These are only a couple of the possible applications of tracking and using keyword searches.  Am I 100% convinced that either would work?  Not completely.  But hey, they might.  

 Statistical pitfalls to take into account (yeah, it’s a disclaimer).

Now obviously, the number of searches for anything will be influenced by the media or current social climate, so these need to be taken into account.  If a politician is say, caught in a public restroom soliciting sex, this will of course influence the number of people searching their name.  It will not be an idicator of their popularity.  So we need to take this into account.

 We also need to consider the audience that’s searching.  Internet users, though part of the greater population, by no means are a perfect representation of the whole.

This concludes my disclaimer.  Complaints?  Email me.

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How to Get Tasty: the 2 things you NEED to get HOT on Del.icio.us

Last week our blog made it on to the del.icio.us Hotlist with its third post.  We saw subscribers double, 325 people bookmarked us and traffic jumped by about 5,000 hits or so.  Not an insane amount of traffic but, all-in-all, it was a nice little bump. So, how’d I do it? 

You’ll find you have more control over social media sites than you might think… 

Image courtesy of VintageIP.

The article that made it.

The post that’s responsible is What’s My Name #$%&*?. In a nutshell, it details the naming process (of products, businesses, etc) and some unique naming strategies / tools.

How long did it take to write?

I’m neither an author nor a genius, so I’m a slow writer.  Though I didn’t time myself, my guess would be that What’s My Name #$%&*? took me about 8 hours to write. 

The 2 (and ONLY 2) rules I followed…

Rule #1 – Create value (or try).

This one is talked about a lot in marketing circles.  The proverbial ‘build it and they will come’ approach.  It’s both the most obvious and the easiest to overlook piece of creation.  Why?  Because creating something of value can be a pain in the ass.  Especially, if you’re not getting directly paid for it.  However, this is THE deal with social media sites.  You MUST create something of value to get noticed.  And it must be free.

What is value?  Big question.  For our purposes here though, we’ll define value as anything that your readers want or can use.  Your article/post/site can have:

- informational value
- emotional value
- entertainment value
etc

You’ll actually find that most of what people value will fall into a fairly small set of easily targeted categories.  Bottom line, create something that has value to your reader and your message will get fully ingested, bookmarked and passed around.

Rule #2 – Let people know.

As with any marketing campaign, it’s all about who sees your message.  The new blogger can write post after post of golden information and if no one sees it, they’re sunk. 

So, lets say you’re a new blogger and you don’t have an email list to alert or an existing traffic source to help “get the word out” about your new blog.  (This is where just about everyone starts.)  What should you do?

You have one, very powerful tool at your disposal.  Email.  Caroline Middlebrook made mention of this idea over on her blog also.  Email may be your only way of communicating with people about what you have to offer, so USE IT. 

The process is comprised of three steps. 

A) Figure out what kind of readers and what kind of websites would be interested in your blog and your specific post. 

If your blog covers do-it-yourself home improvement and the post you’re promoting is about flooring, your ‘target market’ is going to be people interested in DIY and flooring in particular.  See our article about segmentation and targeting for some good strategies on this.

B) Make a list of the influential names and websites in this niche and collect their contact info.

Using the DIY example above, look up keywords/phrases in Google such as “how to install floors”, “do it yourself flooring”, etc and make a list of other blogs and websites that both cover your topic AND have sizeable readerships.  You want to target ‘influential’ individuals here, who, if they mention your article on their site, will send some traffic.

C) Email them and say hi.  Introduce yourself, tell them about your article and why they should be interested.

Be personal.  No form emails.  Craft a specific email for each and every person you’re contacting.  It’s more than a promo email you’re writing, it’s the beginning of a relationship.

The Outcome.

Not every article you write or piece of info/entertainment you offer is going to be a slam dunk.  Some you think are destined for greatness will bomb.  Others you don’t give a second thought to may run to the top of digg, del.icio.us, etc.  It’s a numbers game.  But if played right, the numbers can be turned very much in your favor.

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