yearning - by William Steig

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring a powerful tool that has exerted a subtle but profound influence on my professional life. Google Insights has become a backdrop for our strategic work, and truth be told, a bit of a fascinating toy as well.

On a technical level, Insights is a free search engine analysis tool, and it’s extremely easy to use. It breaks down search engine results by time and location; it also provides feedback about trends related to the terms you query.

In terms of my own use, I think of Insights as a window into the desires of the Internet’s hive mind. Its obvious uses are powerful indeed. One client, for example, provides a service available from multiple sources in our community but with limited availability in BC, just north of their location. Insights pinpointed one community – Surrey – in which this particular service saw over 5,000% growth. Wow.

I challenge you to invest 30 minutes exploring terms related to your own business or occupation without experiencing a shift of perspective. In time, you can sculpt your queries to ask very nuanced questions. I recommend paying particular attention to the related terms that appear on the bottom of the search.

Its less obvious uses are even more fascinating to me – particularly as they relate to the viral quality certain ideas, words, and behaviors have. I’ve been exploring slang, jargon, pop culture, and misinformation of all kinds. Climate change vs. global warming vs. global warming hoax? Even our collective shift from coughing into our hands to coughing into our elbows play out in interesting ways in Insights.

Where even I wouldn’t claim that this information is always useful, I can’t help but think that use of this tool has given me a new perspective on marketing and a new insight into the ideas that are top of mind, both today and yesterday. If you’re in the business of capturing minds at any level, I think you’ll find that it’s an indispensable tool.

Doing research is a huge part of my professional life, and for the most part I love doing it – thanks in no small part to the amazing tools available today.  Below are some of my favorites, all of which are free.

Google Reader

This application lets you efficiently monitor any number of blogs, which can be conveniently categorized by topic. Blogs are a great way of researching specific industries, technologies, or people. As an online tool, it can be available from any computer or mobile device.  Other than a search engine, it is the most powerful research tool I use.

Media Monkey

iTunes is great in many ways, but it suffers from significant flaws.  It’s a resource hog, filled with ads, uses a proprietary format, and surreptitiously  imposes a lot of controls  about who owns the media you’ve purchased.  Media Monkey  has none of these issues and it works great – particularly for having a single media library be accessible from multiple machines via a small network.  It is also compatible with mobile devices, including iPods.  I use it for listening to audio podcasts, audio books, and music.

Miro

Miro is a great tool for monitoring video podcasts.  It runs in the background, gradually downloading content. I use it for learning about drawing, technology, and social issues.  Without a doubt, my favorite podcast is TED — an amazing and inspirational series of lectures about a variety of social, technological, artistic, and cultural issues.  Also free.

I thought this little ad was brilliant in terms of ideas and execution – a nice combination of high and low tech. I especially liked the thoughtfulness of conveying technical, abstract ideas as metaphors with string, balloons, and dye.