One of the challenges we face at SparkToro is deciding between comprehensiveness vs. relevance in the audience data we deliver. In a nutshell, it’s the difference between knowing all the behaviors an audience might have (including the weird, random affinities, strange correlations, and surprising overlaps) vs. the ones that are most useful and compelling to
Office Hours: Instantly Upgrade Your Events and Webinars
By This one came back on our radar after a special request from a few friends who wanted to rewatch this video. (Hi, Ronnie and Melisse!) Some of the examples and SparkToro screenshots are now dated. But the strategic advice still holds up. In this episode, Rand and Amanda break down what makes events worth attending,
If Search Captures Demand, Public Evidence Creates It
By Note: If you prefer audio, you can listen to a slightly-less polished version of this blog post on my show, the Zero Click Marketing podcast. A couple stats kind of make me laugh in our Google Analytics: our direct traffic, which states that around 45% of our traffic is direct; and our search traffic, which
Office Hours: How to Write Influence-Driven Marketing Messaging
By “Where we’re going, we don’t need… roads.” Slip on your self-lacing Nike Mags, and buckle up in the DeLorean. We’re going back to 2021 to that time I (Amanda) presented on writing influence-driven marketing messaging. A lot has changed since then. AI wasn’t yet swallowing every marketing conversation whole, “zero-click” was just starting to take
New Research: Influence Happens Everywhere, an analysis of the 5,000 most-visited sites on the mobile and desktop web
By Several weeks ago, I published some important research about where search happens on the web. Spoiler: everywhere, but ~73% is still Google. This data, fascinating as it is, begets another question – where does influence happen? What do people read, watch, listen-to, browse, and surf on the web *before* they search? For answers, I turned
Audience Research Newsletter: Why Audience Research; Grow Your Podcast; When to Charge for Public Speaking
By We’re publishing prior issues of the Audience Research Newsletter here! But we’re not just copying and pasting from the archives — we’re only surfacing what we believe is still salient today. For the newest, freshest advice on audience research and doing better marketing, subscribe here so you don’t miss new editions! We send this newsletter
Why LinkedIn Might Have Two Algorithms — and Why Marketers Should Care
By We marketers talk about the LinkedIn algorithm as though it’s a single behemoth. But a recent analysis from Christopher Penn suggests the platform may be running two separate systems that work together to determine what shows up in the feed. One system decides whether your post should even be considered for someone’s feed. The other
Office Hours: Who Will Amplify This and Why?
By There’s an expression about the cobbler’s children not having shoes. We’re kind of like that. We are the cobblers AND the children, and we somehow have lots and lots of shoes, not all of them fit, and we keep making more anyway. In the spirit of wearing all our shoes (you’re still with me, right?)
NEW in SparkToro: Uncover the AI Prompt Topics Your Audience is Using in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Claude, and more
By “Rand, I love that SparkToro tells me which search and AI tools my audience is using, but… could you also tell me what they’re searching and prompting?” For a long time, the answer was only yes to 50% of that request. Starting today, we’ve got it all. Research any audience in SparkToro and we’ll show
How Much is Your Audience Searching Google vs. Prompting AI Tools? SparkToro’s Answers Just Got an Upgrade
By For the past year, SparkToro’s had the remarkable ability to tell you how much your audience used Google vs. ChatGPT, Perplexity vs. Yahoo, Claude vs. Bing, and dozens of other search engines and AI tools. But… well, we’re a bit embarassed to say this… that data used clickstream visitation, NOT search and prompting activity. When