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Case Study - IZEA VizSearch
IZEA
desktop vizsearch computer2
FALL
2019
hero sticker vizsearch magnifyinghero sticker vizsearch mediahero sticker vizsearch taghero sticker vizsearch sateliteCase Study Stickers - SparklesCase Study Stickers - SparklesCase Study Stickers - SparklesCase Study Stickers - Sparkles
CONTENT DISCOVERY
How
do
I
find
vizsearch statement 2
content
&
off-platform
creators
more
vizsearch statement 1
effectively?
Fragmented Content Search Experience: Within the IZEA platform, visual content is scattered across individual creator profiles, making it challenging for marketers to locate the high-quality, engaging imagery that truly represents their brand. Marketers must navigate rigid creator search that focus on individual profiles rather than the creative essence of the content, resulting in a fragmented experience that underutilizes IZEA’s 1 billion+ content repository.

Not Enough Opt-In Creators: The current model confines marketers to a pool of opt-in creators, leaving a significant gap when it comes to exploring fresh, creative content from discovered creators beyond the platform. Marketers are eager to expand their search, tap into a broader spectrum of creators and content, and ultimately invite these discovered creators to join their campaigns for a more effective collaboration.
Process
What Were the Users Saying?
1.
Unable to Search for Content

It was impossible for marketers to search through IZEA’s extensive content repository. In addition, they would love to be able to filter by sponsored status, platform, date, and performance metrics.

Quotation Mark   Open

Right now I have to click on every creator profile to see what kind of content they post about. I wish there's a way to just search through all the content at once.

- Campaign Manager

Quote Box   Triangle
2.
Limited Access to Creators

Marketers are frustrated by the limited pool of 700K+ opt-in creators and are hoping to expand their search to include off-platform talent and creative content.

Quotation Mark   Open

The platform doesn't have enough creators. Sometimes I need to go directly to Instagram to look for additional creators and it's kind of annoying.

- SaaS User

Quote Box   Triangle
3.
Lack of Brand Insights

Marketers want to be able to identify which brands are mentioned in each content piece and discover other content referencing the same brand.

Quotation Mark   Open

When I'm running a campaign for our client, it would be awesome if I could easily find content mentioning their brand so I know which creators are already posting about the brand organically.

- Campaign Coordinator

Quote Box   Triangle
Value
Opportunities 
Intuitive search experience 
to easily find the content you’re looking for with keywords, hashtags, brand names, and categories. 
vizsearch opp pinterest
Pinterst-like content layout
that puts the visual and aesthetic of content at the core of search experience.
Search text highlighting
that shows the users how the content matches the search term.
Discovered content
in VizSearch to search through 1 billion+ pieces of content sourced from both in-platform and discovered creators.
Content details
to view insights and to interact with the embedded content without leaving the platform.
Content badges 
to easily identify which posts are sponsored and what brands were mentioned in each post. 
Deliverable
Search Result
Case Study - Yellow Bullet Point
BrandGraph Badges
Showcase which brands are mentioned in the post description. If you want to see more content mentioning Cheerios, you can click on the badge to perform a new search.
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Content Snippet
Highlights what keyword was matched, whether the post was sponsored, and how the post performed. 
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Connection Profile
Profile information about the connection including follower count and whether the creator is in-platform or discovered.
Deliverable
Content Details
Case Study - Yellow Bullet Point
Content Embed
The embed empowers you to easily interact with the content without leaving platform.
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Email Invite
The system automatically pulls the Discovered Creator’s email from their bio so marketers can easily reach out to the Creators or invite them to join the platform.
Case Study - Yellow Bullet Point
Content Details
Details about the content including description, publish date, post URL, sponsored badge, brand mentions, and performance. 
Feedback
Iterations & Releases
Case Study - Yellow Bullet Point
MVP
Search Through Content In the MVP version, users can search with keywords, perform filtering and sorting, and click to expand the search results.
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Phase 1
More Platform Support: Because the MVP version only supported Instagram, the search was very limited. We decided to add support for all the other platforms to help users expand their search.
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Phase 2
Embed VizSearch in Creator Profiles: With this feature, users can easily search with keywords to see how the creator talked about their brand in the past and identify if the creator has worked with their competitors recently.
Case Study - Yellow Bullet Point
Phase 3
Add in Discovered Creators: Although IZEA has more than 700,000 opt-in creators already, users still don't want to miss out on the millions of amazing creators that are not part of the marketplace. We started scraping the internet for creator content and creating profiles for them in the platform.
Case Study - Yellow Bullet Point
Phase 4
Support for Brand Search: The brand badges allow users to easily see which brands were mentioned without clicking into individual post. We also added brands and categories to the autocomplete dictionary to enable users to search with brand entities.
Feedback
What's Next
Grouping the Results by Creator
In the current experience, content search results is on the post level, meaning users can browse, filter, and sort through all the social media posts matching the keyword. It would be super valuable if we can allow the users to group the results by creator to see which creator mentioned the keyword the most or has the best overall performance metric.
Image Recognition
The keyword search currently only searches through the post's text description. It would be super helpful if we can run image recognition on the content and use those tags in our search to enhance the accuracy of the results.
Similar Content
When users click to open a piece content in VizSearch, the similar content feature would recommend other content that are visually similar. This would allow users to discover more content based on aesthetic, style, and subject of the image.
Social Listening
After we rolled out the MVP, we were surprised to learn how customers were using the feature as a social listening tool to track which creators are organically talking about their brand or who their competitors are working with. In the future, we can develop more tools in the line of social listening to enable our users to set up alerts and to visualize the social activity related their brand.