So, you have a great product, opportunity, or business, now how do you get people to come look at what you have to offer? Sure, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, has been the foundation of a good marketing campaign for years, it’s the first place marketers have looked to, to promote and sell—but I’m telling you, all that has changed. And for good. What do I mean? Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the web, and it’s called social media!

What is social media?

Well, of course for those reading this article it probably doesn’t need to be defined, but for grins here goes! Social Media is a conjunction of two words. A means and a method, if you will. Social, as in community, interaction, communications, and of course people, is the means. Media, what we used to call “rich media content”, is the vehicle that promotes this type of community, or the method. Whether video, as in videocasts, chat, audio, as in podcasts, or twitter-like microblogging, all play a role in this interaction, in other words, it’s a conversation.

“Where” you converse is basically the prerequisite for “how” you will converse.

So what has that to do with marketing, and SEO campaigns? A lot. Google rankings, called pageranks, which have been the envy and bane of marketers for years, is now “just” another tool in the arsenal, and not the most important one either. Some pundits in the industry actually rate SEO as only 10-20% of the marketing equation. The rest laying squarely in the hands of social media. This is actually a good thing, as Google, trying to keep relevance and to downplay social media’s emerging role in the webosphere, has once again (yes, and again, and again) changed their way of rendering search results. All this to stifle the unseen, but much heard, and felt, competition from the masses.

And those who service them.

Social media is like a large, vast, townsquare. In the environs of social media, all are equal, all are important, and most importantly, all have relevance. This then begs the question “how do I reach this audience”, “how do I connect with them and hold their interest”? Good questions, and many a good technogeek is steadly working on the answer, and some are already here!  In social media we have a qualified market of users, buyers, corporate movers and shakers, and more, that when active in their perspective communities, collectively outstrip the market reach of “just searching”. You need to “be there”. It is a dynamic consumer-base that is already being exploited—though only peripherally.

Two heavyweights have risen from this melee, namely Twitter and Facebook.

What do they have in common between them that has catapalted them to the forefront, made them a must-have social destination, especially with the latest changes made by Facebook? Flexible communications. There are more ways to interface, interact and dynamically thrive in these two social communities than anywhere else online. LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and their like, really reflect more of the “old school” method of interaction. All things being equal, MySpace could have been a contender, but ultimately the catered-to demographic it serves, excludes it from any real and serious promotion. It’s mainly a consumer-centric service, catering to a younger and more capricious generation.

A business tool (of serious marketing note) for businesses it is not! Unless your company profile markets to that segment of the market. Too specific and underfunded, it yields little to the entrepenuer and small business that are just started out and spreading their wings. In fine, there’s nowhere to really perch.

So what does Twitter and Facebook really offer that’s so different?

Twitter’s strength is in it’s immediacy. Everything happens NOW! Get there too late, and all the fireworks have fizzled, the party-goers have gone home, and all festivities are over, with only the after-party clean-up left to be done. It is a realtime tool that can hit quick, hit hard and hit direct, and give a saavy marketer almost instant feedback and response to which to calibrate their final marketing push. It has a pulsebeat. It’s an environment that you can build relationships on, meet those of like mind and demeanor, and also quite as fast, lose them all. It is not for the “casual” embrace of community, but the more immediate gratification and intimacy of an ongoing conversation among peers.

Twitter makes you the center of attention, just like everybody else!

Facebook, with it’s recent changes especially, bridges that scenario into real community building. Establishing long term relationships based on mutual need, interests and/or business type. It is a place. Rich media is available everywhere, tools to help you interact with one another are just a click away no matter where you are, or what you are doing. With the new “home” page recently redesigned, you can get a broader, deeper, and more open snapshot of your expanded Facebook world and community. Now with a click of a button, you can find friends, make new ones, and establish a community, ad hoc, that is dynamic, constantly flowing, and exceptionally vibrant.

It screams marketing nirvana!

But in the last few months, that’s a few years in internet speak for any of the unintiated, tools, services and resources have cropped up to combine and merge the two functionalities. Creating as it were, one vast and mighty social juggernaut winding it’s way through it’s binary world, unchecked, but greatly noted. It makes sense that this should happen when you look at this from a “singular place of community”. Twitter acts as the conversation, you meet, you talk, you explore, and if you have common interests, you can then move into a more definitive place of interaction, that fosters the community building and sharing that was introduced in your conversation. It’s a natural migration path. It’s like when you get serious about the person you’re dating—eventually you bring them home to meet the folks.

Facebook is all about the folks, it can become, quite literally, an online family.

So Google, the acknowledge “king of search”, is scrambling for more web significance in the marketplace it once dominated and controlled. However, there is truly a good chance it will not ever reach the pinnacle it once had attained, and laughing claimed as it’s own. When a company makes personal animosities, dislikes, and/or biases, policy, concerning social media, or anything else for that matter, and this is just the tip of the Google-berg, it kills the confidence of your tech-savvy users, and alienates the consumer-centric populace. And one thing should be painfully clear to the folks up yonder, marketers are the pinnacle of tech-savvy, their businesses depend on it.

The consumer arena may give Google some breathing space—for awhile.

So the full arsenal of marketing tools has expanded, and significantly so. There are more options, with more reach, and more significance than “just search”. When marketing your opportunity, product, resource, or service, think social media first. And in so doing, it is really important to focus on the two elephants dancing in the room. If you don’t, you just might find yourself flattened by the competition.

I wouldn’t lie to you, just “google” it and see!

Be blessed, be loved and be at peace.

~ Jonathan

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