Category: Product

Product Psychology Startups

SaaS Churn and Short-Term Customers: The Contrarian View

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Ever wonder why so many business software companies make it so darn difficult to start using their products? Or why subscription-focused tools are so obsessed with making it hard to quit vs. making it easy to sign up? Why don’t these SaaS (software-as-a-service, aka subscription) companies want customers who might only need their product every few months or even only…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro

NEW SparkToro Feature: Discover the Press/Media Sources That Reach Your Audience

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’m excited to announce that today, SparkToro is launching a new tab, with new data, for all customers: free and paid. When you perform an audience intelligence search, you’ll see the new “Press” tab on the left sidebar, displaying media sources followed + engaged-with by the searched-for audience. Sometimes, these publications will have overlap with the “websites” or “social” tabs,…
Data Product SparkToro

The Three Biggest Problems Folks Have When Searching SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Tens of thousands of marketers, researchers, product managers, and more are using SparkToro to learn more about their audiences. That’s inspiring. I love it. And also… Some of y’all are getting stuck. It’s not your fault! SparkToro’s a new tool, with a new search paradigm, and new kinds of audience data. So, it’s up to us to help out. In…
Marketing Product Psychology

Social Networks “Optimize for Engagement.” What Does That Mean for Marketers?

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
I’m a firm believer that incentives and systems govern behavior at scale. If you want to understand why companies make the decisions they do, look at how their executives and boards are rewarded. If you’re trying to grok an unfamiliar sport, see how points are scored and wins are tabulated. Follow the incentives, and you’ll understand the system. If you’re…
Data Marketing Product SparkToro

How to Apply SparkToro’s Data and Get Better Marketing Results

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Updated April 3, 2024: We relaunched SparkToro! This blog post has been updated to reflect our product’s current functionalities. In 2018, my cofounder, Casey, and I had a crazy idea: what if you could aggregate the behavior of tens of millions of public social profiles and get insights into how groups of people behave online? What if you could build…
Data Product SparkToro

Election Polls vs. Results Can Help Explain How SparkToro’s Data Works

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent the last 48 hours frantically refreshing the NYTimes, Politico, the Washington Post, Five Thirty Eight, & Memeorandum far more times than is healthy. This American election, more than any news event in my lifetime, has induced massive anxiety, fear, hope, and emotional turmoil (at least in those who understand how systems influence behavior…
Data Product Psychology SparkToro

Analyze Your Audience’s Political & Media Behavior in SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
In our ongoing quest to provide unique, valuable audience intelligence, we’re launching a brand new feature in SparkToro today: Media and Political Insights. You’ll find this data available in the Audience Insights section of any SparkToro search. Any timing of this release with major, upcoming political events is purely coincidental… 😉 ABOVE: Media and Politics Insights for users of the…
Marketing Product SparkToro

Six Ways SparkToro’s Early Customers Use Our Product

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Tl;DR: SparkToro’s early customers include a mix of agencies, independent consultants, and in-house marketers whose work involves Digital PR, Social Media+Content Marketing, Market Research, Digital Advertising, Audience Building, and/or Creative/Brand Marketing. Clicking those will take you to the accompanying section of this post with use-cases and examples. This has been a hard year for everyone. The pandemic’s separated us from…
Product SparkToro

New Feature Alert: Email + Contact Info Are Now In SparkToro

Rand FishkinBy Rand Fishkin
Since launch in April, showing emails and contact information inside the SparkToro app has been our most requested feature. Today, it’s here. Billions of email addresses and social contact URLs now pull directly into the Lists feature. If you’ve used SparkToro Lists in the past (and have a Standard or higher tier account), your Lists have already been updated to…

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