In theory, content marketing is easy. Provide people with content that they like, build rapport, and make customers. Unfortunately, things aren’t as simple as they seem. Thanks to constant changes and updates that allow marketers and creators to reach people in new ways, you need to consistently follow up on those new opportunities. Each week in the Content Radar we let you know about these updates to help you stay at the top of your game.
Google Discover promises to help users find content they “haven’t even started looking for”
Digital consumers have largely come to expect that organizations like Google are going to use whatever data they are able to use to encourage marketers and consumers to utilize their products. Despite this, some of the updates still cause users to pause and evaluate how Google is using their personal information.
The newest example of this comes thanks to Google Discover — Google’s newly renamed version of Google Feed, which was first released last year. We’ll get to the details with Google Discover in a minute, but let’s first examine this sentence from Google’s blog post that introduces Google Discover:
“Discover is unique because it’s one step ahead: It helps you come across the things you haven’t even started looking for.”
Smart use of technology? Or creepy intrusion of personal preferences? Let’s delve a little deeper into how Google Discover works to help you make up your mind.
How does it work?
In a nut shell, Google Discover uses search algorithms to identify content that it thinks will be valuable to individual users. That content is served up in the Google app on mobile devices. Google categorizes the content it serves to you with topic headers. In some instances, these topic headers are directly related to something you searched for. In other instances, the topic headers are served up by Google as assumptive topics that you might be interested in based on your overall activity online. Users who see a topic they are interested in on Google Discover can tap to dive in deeper to the available content.
So, it’s like social media, right?
Not exactly. Over time, Google will provide you with the content it thinks will be of most interest to you (and it will most likely usually be right), but users don’t “follow” any specific brand or individual. In this instance, content truly is king. If a marketer has quality content that is relevant to a user, there is a chance the user will come across the content. However, if you are relying on brand loyalty or recognition to drive engagement on Google Discover, you probably won’t get the results you are looking for.
Is this a good thing for marketers?
For marketers who are willing to play by Google’s rules, Discover could become another positive way to deliver content to an interested audience. And what are the rules? That’s not entirely known, but clearly SEO will have a major impact on Google’s ability to find and deliver your content to interested audiences. Google will emphasize not only new content in Discover — but also content that is “new for you.” Simply put, relevant evergreen content has an equal opportunity to be seen in users’ Discover feeds.
During Cypress North’s Marketing O’Clock webcast, host Greg Finn spoke about this inclusion of more evergreen content.
“That’s great for marketers who put together really good stuff or companies that really serve their customers well,” Finn said. “They’re not going to be just one and done within the feed, so we’re really excited about that.”
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