Search is Social

tangy slice hit this topic a week or so ago. he went a little further and talked about mixing a little (gasp!) outbound marketing into the mix to drive awareness. optimization? for sure. but as frank pointed out in his post and jun notes here in the comments, sometimes you have to give people a free beer or two till they realize how cool your new nightclub is. here's what I wrote about what he wrote...http://btrandolph.com/2009/09/all-your-oranges-in-one-basket/

tangy slice hit this topic a week or so ago. he went a little further and talked about mixing a little (gasp!) outbound marketing into the mix to drive awareness. optimization? for sure. but as frank pointed out in his post and jun notes here in the comments, sometimes you have to give people a free beer or two till they realize how cool your new nightclub is. here's what I wrote about what he wrote...http://btrandolph.com/2009/09/all-your-oranges-in-one-basket/

tangy slice hit this topic a week or so ago. he went a little further and talked about mixing a little (gasp!) outbound marketing into the mix to drive awareness. optimization? for sure. but as frank pointed out in his post and jun notes here in the comments, sometimes you have to give people a free beer or two till they realize how cool your new nightclub is. here's what I wrote about what he wrote...http://btrandolph.com/2009/09/all-your-oranges-in-one-basket/

tangy slice hit this topic a week or so ago. he went a little further and talked about mixing a little (gasp!) outbound marketing into the mix to drive awareness. optimization? for sure. but as frank pointed out in his post and jun notes here in the comments, sometimes you have to give people a free beer or two till they realize how cool your new nightclub is. here's what I wrote about what he wrote...http://btrandolph.com/2009/09/all-your-oranges-in-one-basket/

Your point that "Just knowing who to ask and how to do effective outreach" is half the battle is especially true for smaller businesses (if not more than half the battle). While it's easy enough to say that small biz should outsource SEO/SEM and SMM functions, it's hard for them to even know who to outsource it too. A friend of mine runs an online and catalog gourmet food company with his father and the two of them are the only employees who actually focus on marketing - among a million other things. My friend knows that SEO is important but doesn't know who to go to. It seems that in order to even know who's good you need to know something about SEO and be involved in the community. To make matters worse there are hundreds of people claiming to be experts, when all they really have is 40k twitter followers from mass following (the problem is exponentially worse when it comes to "social media experts") How can small business owners like my friend know who to trust?

Stuart Absolutely search and optimization go together. As you have pointed out you can have great content but if no-one is searching then no-one is seeing. I think that as more businesses, mainly small businesses, adopt social media the shift will be to paid to get started as they will want and need more immediate results that they would not be able to obtain with purely organic efforts. Great post.

The two undoubtedly are connected. Although Lijit doesn't increase your SEO, it is a "social search" for blogs and websites where you can index your entire site, your online social content (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) and your blogroll that you link to directly all into your own custom search. Somewhat along the lines...as a content discovery tool that integrates individually as your blog is the 'center of your universe.' Back to how you started, "We want to have our content be seen by a critical mass of people/customers in order to effectively communicate our message..." is really how all the content you're creating online can be found, together. This is interesting especially as I'm in the search biz and I like to see how it unfolds in many different layers. Great post!

You should know me well enough by now to see that I meant it only in the best way possible.

Paying for exposure isn't evil. It's just smart (especially if you have the money to invest in it).

One could take that two separate ways. I'll go with big dealism.

Like you?

Those companies probably won't exist in a few years. Google is kind of a big deal.

Interesting. Loving how that guy is cashing in on being a dick btw.

Absolutely. You need to ensure that each goes hand in hand though when talking about each other. To try and practice social without thinking about search would be ludicrous.

I think that many companies just don't understand how search is relevant to them - and hence the reason SM marketing isn't working well for some companies. They just don't get it, and aren't willing to explore why.

Sure - social media is arguably the most current form of information out there. It spreads quickly and propagates across many channels of communication (from YouTube, to Twitter, to Facebook, to LinkedIn). Search engines have recognized this and are adapting to include social communities in their search results. It's really a win-win-win combination. With solid content you 1) Grow your community and network, 2) Optimize for search which will drive traffic to your site, and 3) Your content will be more targeted and accurate if you're aware of all of this and create accordingly.

I would add that while it's critical to the optimization task to understand Google's and other search engines algorithms, a company or consultant has to go into it with the knowledge that Google et al. can change their weights and methods as they see fit, with no notice; they're not a public service, after all. I would say that it's important to understand the wide variety of factors that go into SEO, from an algorithmic perspective, and be ready to adapt. This fits into what Stu was saying about having your metadata match the current trend in social bookmarking.

I think you hit it on the head today. I find that too many social media marketers believe that creating a community is enough. But how are you supposed to create a community without first driving the traffic? Garyvee talks about numbers not being important, which I believe to a certain extent. Building a company blog is great, writing great content is even better, but it's not going to go anywhere if you don't drive the traffic. To get the initial traffic there, you will need to pay for the traffic. Furthermore, once the traffic gets there, you need to convert. All of this goes beyond what social media (community building) is about. No amount of Tweeting or blog commenting is going to get you the traffic that paid advertising can get you in the beginning stages of your site. Once you have optimized your site and have good content on there, then you can establish authority and start building traffic purely organically. Good post bro

Actually just read a MediaPost piece on how Democrat Rob Miller, running after Joe Wilson's seat in 2010, received $750,000 in unsolicited Web-based campaign contributions after the "You Lie" fiasco. Although news-related, the opportunity for any business from a search and social perspective is very clear. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Artic...

Well, sure. Outside of newsy topics - press releases, product launches, customer service fiascos, brand conversations all impact QDF. Even taking social out of the equation, if there are a ton of emails circulating -- say on a new product release -- in addition to press releases and RSS feeds from blogs and aggregators, these will all contribute to the signal. The opportunity is to optimize it on your own site with content, as well socially to enhance the signal.

Interesting bit of information Monica. Although that makes a TON of sense now that I think of it. I wonder if the QDF could be utilized in other non-breaking news manners?

Search is so important in terms of driving traffic, making content readily visible and actually driving people to relevant information. It's absolutely crucial that you optimize. Otherwise you are screwed.

There is a Google algorithm component referred to as "QDF", or also known as the "Query Deserves Freshness", which is why frequently updated content (breaking news, video, etc.) are generally at the top of search results. At times, even if the content does not have many links, if there is a wildfire of content being produced over one specific topic ("Serena Williams meltdown", "Kanye West apology", "Patrick Swayze dies") the QDF solution will examine the popular search queries and provide the most recent information. Google has patents that track these "social signals" - taking reviews, uploads, social bookmarking, Twitter activity and other forms of engagement into consideration when determining freshness. SEO is social - it's PR, community-building, marketing, outreach and customer service. Yes there is a strong technical component, but without ongoing social activity you might as well be invisible.

I've been telling this and preaching this to anyone with half a mind. Want to wrap your sm marketing plan around something tangible and which the client can relate to? Stress the importance and relevance of search. It's probably why a lot of social media marketing initiatives fall flat, because the person doesn't understand the value and importance of search as it pertains to social. Good one Stuart