You’re listening to the Being Found Show and believe it or not we are your guide to being found by more buying customers. If your company isn’t being found, then who’s is? You can listen to segments of the show on beingfound.com. We’ve got tips and advice and all kinds of good stuff. We’re coming to you from KCNR 1460 AM. Also, I really think we owe some gratitude to Carl Bott, the owner of this station for letting us do this show. He had the idea for the show.
Joe: So I want to jump into some news. Facebook is launching a new app for kids which technically kids aren’t even supposed to have Facebook, which we all know they do, but we will come back to that.
Is Google now in the business of creating content?
I want to go over another news story real quick. Hey Chauncey, did you know that Google is taking this step to allow celebrities to create videos to answer questions that they’re always being asked like can Will Ferrell really play the drums? And Google is actually putting in regular search results, the answers to those questions in video form. So Google is basically soliciting Will Ferrell and others other celebrities to answer the question that Google knows that everybody’s asking, by video. Then when you look for Will Ferrell or ask that question, Google is deciding to show that above any Facebook or any other search criteria.
Chauncey: Well given the way that Google works they tend to focus on what the largest numbers are. I have to say that I find some of this a little depressing that people are more interested in the fact that Will Ferrell can play the drums than how to get their website found and search better and they didn’t come to us for a video.
Joe: That is an interesting point because it’s Google themselves that shared this news and said expect more of this with celebrities. It said to keep your eyes open for more ways that you’re going to be able to use this. So this is a little bit of pulling back the green curtain of how Google works. I wonder if this means that if you’re in a certain geographical area and you dominate or you’re one of the most respected businesses, maybe for a plumber or something like that, if Google will solicit you to answer plumbing questions or lawyer questions and play the video on Google when people ask the question.
Chauncey: Yeah and I wonder how they’ll connect that to the regular world. Will they use Google Plus+? Because right now the knowledge graph in google results is populated by Google My Business or is populated by Google Shopping or Google Images. So I wonder what mechanism they’ll use to populate that for the general population like us. Will they use Google Plus or Google My Business? Where will that come from?
Joe: In other words would we just go to our Google+ and answer or is there a whole new platform?
Chauncey: Yeah because they’re not going to reach out to, you know, 300 million people individually. They’re going to have to be some sort of mechanism to get it in there.
Joe: Yeah and right now you can only see this on mobile devices. There are quite a few people doing this. There is Tracee Ellis Ross, Will Ferrell, Karen Thompson, Nick Jonas, Mark Wahlberg, all those people are answering the questions that you care about.
So I would say right now start asking those questions on Google and watch some of those videos and they’re pretty raw. They’re interesting but you can only see them on your mobile device. I just wonder what that tells us about what’s happening and what’s coming for businesses. But also there’s something that I’ve been talking to our clients about a lot and that is that Google is trying harder and harder to beat your website.
Joe: And so I really see this as another play where Google’s saying well instead of someone having to go to your Facebook profile, your Twitter profile, your “About Us” page, can we create content? In other words, is Google now in the business of creating content?
Chauncey: Well they’re in the business of reading the future because creating content and then being a website, coupled with the new potential laws and net neutrality, it creates just a powerhouse of a website for them.
Joe: So it’s in their favor. As businesses, this is something for us to watch. It does tell us like you said Google’s in the business of telling the future, it does tell us that these videos are a way that people want to get answers or Google would not be going through with this. So as a business are you finding those questions that your customers are asking and are you making short little videos to answer them? These are not even high production videos. One of the ladies is in a bathrobe. Will Ferrell doesn’t look like he shaved or combed his hair.
Chauncey: You know this is a prime example though of being found. You’re talking about videos and being found is being available on the different channels. But it’s also being available in the different ways that people want to consume that information. You know, some people just want to listen, some people want to watch, some people want to read. You need to be available in those areas. Now I realize you can’t do them all at once but statistically you can pick one and run with it and then expand.
Joe: Well if we look at one of the giants in search, Moz , they do a video, they have their video transcribed to a blog post and then they put images in the post. They’re trying to do all of it.
We’re coming to the end of this segment. Thanks for listening to the Being Found Show, listen to the full show here: Being Found Show Episode #40
Read more about the new Google celebrity mobile feature here: Google Blog
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