Business Growth Development Consultant

I don’t know about you, but for a while now I’ve been receiving a lot of communications from people running around saying that search is dead and social is going to take over (read scare munge-ring).  Why ? Because they say you will get a better response from friends and colleagues on social media sites….

Hmm… didn’t we all have “real” friends and colleagues before social media came along….and did you make all your decisions based on what your friends and colleagues said then….nope…neither did I.

You see most of my friends and colleagues don’t operate like me, sure they have a valid view but I would never base a decision solely on a recommendation, been there, done that, got the t shirt burnt off my back and its just pure laziness.  I would do my research.

It’s true that through social media people are more connected but I would question the value of many of these connections. Most are following others for the sake of it, merely to allow their messages to broadcast through another channel or for an excuse to shout loader than the next guy or girl.

Now I’m not saying that social won’t have a part to play in all this, especially with Google developments like Caffeine.  Build a loyal following and it works like magic.

Now, Google has always been driven by diversity and authority in that you would get a variety of search results for a given keyword across a range of markets.

i.e. if you typed in the word Java you would get Java coding, Java coffee, Java the country in your search results.

What is happening now though, is Google is siding with authority and giving up on diversity so soon a search page may only contain a few organic listings blended with a lot of other stuff such as sponsored listings, specialised search results etc.

It’s technologies like Caffeine that are enabling Google to take into account “real time” data (or changes) such as twitter and facebook status updates and respond and modify its search results accordingly.

So the key it would seem is blending search authority with social authority as social will continue to update far quicker and remain transient and ever changing (unles you have a loyal niche base) where as search will be more stable but harder to maintain solid rankings in the search results.  All of this is to be mixed with a sprinkling of media diversity, text, video, audio, pr and other stuff to give yourself a chance of grabbing relevant and qualified traffic.

Ultimately it comes down to one thing….developing a tight focus around a specific subject, which is what marketing has always been about right ?

What’s even more interesting is that a number of Google accounts have recently been shut down on people spending millions in google ad revenue and social bookmarking accounts have been slammed overnight because they contravened the rules…..just imagine what would happen if you just relied on one channel for all your income….gulp!….especially if it was just social and it started to go wrong.

Now more than ever you must be thinking about developing a multi channel strategy that makes use of sales, marketing and supporting technology to get your message to market and to keep it focused on a specific niche that you can dominate (or carve out)……or be prepared to say night night to your business.

Don’t rely on just search, social or PPC. Don’t leave it to just one search engine. Don’t just rely on the web.

OK, I just got a chill down my spine, not funny, maybe the marketing reaper is sniffing around…better go do something else.

Related posts:

1. 7 Elements Of Social Media Marketing We Can All Do Better
2. Be careful about the “SEO is dead” touts in online marketing
3. What Is Inbound Marketing
4. A Successful Internet Marketing Plan – The Basics