Use of how, what, who for information retrieval on the Internet and implications for content marketing

Like other people in the world, Nigerians explore the Internet for specific information towards attainment of personal and collective needs. In the course of doing this, the Internet Users use specific search phrases within various search engines for information retrieval. Infoprations’ analysis shows that the Internet Users in Nigeria employed ‘how to, what is, and who is’ to retrieve information that helped them in gaining knowledge power, solving personal needs, understanding the future, attaining achievement and imitating others, remembering the past, enjoying life and having fun from January to June, 2018.  

The three phrases were appropriated to retrieve information that provides detailed and practical advice about ways of doing things, ask for specific information and understand further information about persons and people based on previous information accessed offline.

Analysis reveals that the Users had strong preference for ‘how to’ and ‘what is’ phrases than ‘who is’ phrase. The preference for the ‘how to’ and ‘what is’ is an indication that the phrases were better in delivering the relevant information during the period. In this regard, Infoprations specifically found  57.8% connection between ‘how to’ and ‘what is’. Further analysis shows that ‘how to’ delivered 41.3% of the needed information while ‘what is’ and ‘who is’ failed to deliver appropriate messages by 71.3% and 78.9% respectively.

On the specific information searched during the 6 months, analysis establishes that ‘how to’ helped in retrieving information on money, love, education, communication, life and style, religion, health and employment by 51.4% while ‘what is’ gave 7.5% of the specific information –money, love, education, communication, life and style, health and business management. For the Internet Users who utilised ‘who is’, the search produced 13.9% of specific information on wealth, profession, celebrities and prominent people, and religion.

With these insights, content development need to be reinvented. It has emerged that people prefer using ‘how to’ to retrieve information from the Internet in line with the national norms and values (see specific information charts). Content development and marketing companies should dissect the country’s national culture before creating messages for products, people and companies.