Data Marketing

2018 Search Market Share: Myths vs. Realities of Google, Bing, Amazon, Facebook, DuckDuckGo, & More

For many years, there have been pervasive myths about where Americans search on the web, whether search is dying, whether Amazon (or Facebook, or Bing) is taking Google’s market share, and plenty more. Thanks to new data generously compiled for SparkToro from Jumpshot, a clickstream data provider that monitors more than 10 million desktop and mobile devices in the US,…
Data Events Marketing

On SERP SEO – The Infuriating Reality of Search’s Future

Last week, I was invited to give the closing talk at Brighton SEO, one of the SEO field’s most well-attended events. The host, Kelvin Newman, was gracious, thoughtful, and personally still runs much of the event’s operations, giving it a truly special, authentic, non-corporate feel. My presentation centered on the shift in Google’s behavior over the last few years away…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro

SparkToro’s New Tool to Uncover Real vs. Fake Followers on Twitter

On our journey to creating a great search tool for audience intelligence, we realized that the data we use to measure influence is fatally flawed in a number of ways. Our SparkScore tool was built to help measure true engagement+reach (as opposed to mere following). But the other big problem is fake followers — accounts that exist on Twitter, technically…
Marketing

You’ve Got Product/Market Fit… What About Marketing/Market Fit?

You’ve just been asked to take over the marketing strategy for a new company that makes innovative, high end restaurant equipment. They need their brand and message to reach chefs and owners of independent restaurants. What’s your process? If you’re a smart, responsible, thoughtful marketer, you’ll do something like this: Step One: Figure out what chefs + restauranters pay attention…
Marketing SparkToro

Announcing SparkToro “Trending” — a Front Page for the Web Marketing World

Over the last decade, there have been numerous attempts to create an news aggregation tool for web marketers — Threadwatch, Sphinn, Inbound.org, GrowthHackers, Alltop — but none of them quite scratched the itch. Plus, almost all of them were susceptible to rampant spam and/or ugly drama+trolling in the comments. Casey (SparkToro’s cofounder) and I have lots of experience in this…
Marketing

Contrarian Take: Don’t Start Your Content Marketing with “What Do My Customers Want?”

If you’re in the business of content marketing, I know you’ve seen advice like this: “Start with your customer personas.” “Create content that will resonate with your customers.” “Great content is content that your customers actually want to consume.” It sounds compelling. But in my experience, it’s wrong. Or at least, incomplete. Why?…
Data Marketing

Is SEO Opportunity Growing or Shrinking?

It’s our existential question as SEO professionals — is SEO still growing? Or have Google’s actions reduced the opportunity potential? I see this phrased in all sorts of ways: Are there more searches on Google this year than last year? Is Google taking more of the search traffic for themselves? Do more or fewer clicks go to the organic results…