Understanding the keywords your audiences searches for to find your business is one of the most common skills online. Common sense, right?
When was the last time you found the key words you use in communicating to friends and business? Try this little test on yourself to find out what you are really saying to your audience.
You are looking at a Wolfram Alpha’s Facebook report to the left, which identifies a ton of data about your posts, your friends, the timing of your posts, etc.
That kind of data is interesting the first time, but when I scrolled down the page I found a keyword cloud, like a tag cloud on a blog, summarizing the phrases I use most frequently.
The power of discovering your own intention, and your own mindset, gives you an opportunity for learning how others are hearing what you write (because they do speak those words in their mind out loud ;-), and what it sounds like.
Many times on Facebook you’ll see inspirational sayings about you are what you think, your words define your actions, yet there are negative people on Facebook and there are some so positive that they don’t even connect with you because it’s so extreme.
It’s not that you can’t be happy, instead it’s about the balance of life and the words you use.
Here’s some the interesting language patterns I found in my posts:
1. My top key words:
- Business World
- Love One Life
- People Way
While these are single words, as you see them on the graphic, they summarize what I share with my audience. Because it is a business world, as most of my friends are people I’ve known online.
Love is one of the most common phrases I use, and it wasn’t something I even noticed – Love One Life is just a great phrase for a future blog post, because you really do only have one life and you love it or it’s really going to be a long, sad path.
It is your life, love it, maybe not the circumstances, but the opportunity to live.
2. I searched for negative phrases used as well; too many negative phrases makes things depressing, too many positive phrases make it a bit woo woo.
Impossible, hate, and never come up – not the biggest words, and only a few negative phrases in total. Maybe I should get more negative, but I like to open up to people without adding more angry noise to the social layer.
3. I know certain people who’s most used phrases would be their name or their brand, like a 3rd party reference to yourself, ie, “Declan wants some more lunch”….
One of the powerful insights this report gave me, over the rest of the data, was the kind of words I use to connect with people on Facebook. These are the key words of my posts and my persona to others on Facebook.
They are also an insight into how you look at the world, because the words you use define your outlook. I know this from way back in the day, when we used to test advertising spaces by putting up selections of keywords.
The ones people clicked on the most, and the number of results they clicked on after the result, helped us create a linguistic profile for that audience. That way we could determine whether to run an ad for American Express or debt consolidation – by their words you will know them we used to say.
And by your words, you’ll know yourself. Go test yourself and see what you come up with, what did you learn?
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