The Digital Echo


Internet, they said, was an ocean (or cloud) of knowledge. The Net was invented for free and smooth transfer of information, thoughts and ideas. But somewhere along the way came algorithms, data collection, & AI and now we are being served information conforming to our likes, interests and digital behaviours. The more we use the Net, instead of swimming in an ocean of knowledge, we sit inside an echo chamber confirming our own biases.


Let’s take the 3 common use cases we engage on the Net - reading news, social media, and search (for information) engine


Discovery of news on the Net happens mostly through aggregator platforms like Google News or through the home pages of the news portals. Apart from the top/latest News, have you ever noticed sections that mention - News for you, top picks, etc? These are News articles that is shown to you basis the past content that you’ve consumed.


Ah! Social Media, the favourite waste of time for most of the digital natives. We spends hours chatting with friends, liking, sharing, commenting and also putting out the most inane stuff of our lives for everyone to see. Did you ever notice that you get to see more and more posts and updates of users whose posts or tweets you engaged with? The lesser you engage with a friend’s update, the lesser you’ll see him/her. The more you interact with a specific brand, the more you’ll get to see about them.


Did you know that your search results will be different from mine even though we might have search using the exact keywords/phrases? Yes! It is true. Try it out with couple of other folks. Your search results depend on lots of factors like - devices, location, browser,….and most importantly, your personal search history. (SEO folks, please note)



In all the above use cases, the algorithms and AI are in play. This means our view of the world is based on what we have done in the past (Karma catching up, perhaps) online.


So what does it mean for marketers and brands,


  • In case of content marketing, always lede with content that is in the area of interest of your target audience
  • In case of advertising, depending on the objective (awareness/engagement/sales), make sure to target the audience is are different / similar to your existing audience set
  • In case of Search marketing (SEO), make sure that you do proper research on what your user searches for. Check the search rankings basis their search behaviour, not yours


The digital consumers keep experiencing bandwagon fallacy. The objective of any brand is to get onto that consumer’s bandwagon 



pic sources: Wikipedia and Voxpol.eu

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