Social Media is the culmination of the mediums people use to stay connected on the internet. It is the combination of personal, professional, and entertainment networks that we create as we navigate the internet. There is increasingly strong evidence that social media isn’t just a fad – it is the new way of sharing information.
With the creation of Myspace and Facebook, we saw a massive push towards creating personal internet space (hence Myspace). People could connect, share, communicate, and express themselves without having to be a website developer. Myspace’s popularity has dwindled while Facebook has taken social media to a new level. There are over 500,000,000 facebook users – and most are active on the site multiple times a day for increasing amounts of time.
Other social media channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn have also enjoyed massive amounts of users. The interesting thing about social media is that it is not something that is going away anytime soon, but it will continue to evolve. New services will come out to connect people and share information, but the idea that social media is not sustainable or isn’t here to stay just isn’t holding water.
There have been a few pioneers in the corporate world who have invested in social media because they understood the impact it would have. Pepsi traded their Superbowl commercials for a social media campaign. Ford has been launching new cars and revealing new designs to their fans and followers on social media networks. More and more companies are realizing the power of building brand and loyalty through social media.
After managing social media accounts for a while, we came up with the top 5 reasons social media is NOT a fad but is something that is here to stay.
1) Social Media channels have become integrated into our daily lives – email, news and events, and applications are all funnelled through social media.
2) Social Media allows a fast, friendly, and free way to connect with friends and share info such as images, videos, news and more.
3) Social Media continues to grow in users and volume. New users come on board every day, and the amount of time spent on social media is still increasing.
4) Businesses and individuals see the value of social media. Businesses can create loyalty, branding, and expand customer bases while individuals can connect with friends and businesses and share information.
5) (and possibly most compelling) There is a strong indication that social media will begin influencing search results in search engines such as Google and Bing (which also powers Yahoo! search). You can already see Twitter info and news in search results, but we expect the search engines to adapt and show results based on relevance AND what is trending in social media. This will be a huge shift in how people search for things, and could mark the maturity of a very young (but rapidly growing) way of using the internet.
Take a look at this video that shows the power of social media. Prepare to be amazed.
I was browsing Google this morning and realized an usual occurrence – the page navigation at the bottom of the search results was missing. I refreshed the page and it came back. I did a few more queries and the same thing happened. What is going on over at Google?
It is the holiday weekend, so maybe all the guys are out on their boats or taking a well deserved day off – but I couldn’t hep but find this odd.
Here is a screen shot of this…
It makes it virtually impossible to go past the first page of results. If you can’t get to any more than 10 results, maybe the click-through of their sponsored listings will increase but who knows, right? I am just wondering if this is a fluke, or if anyone else had noticed this.
Happy searching – I hope the Google results are relevant enough for you to find what you are looking for in the first few listings!
The next big move for search engine optimizers has come according to Google. In recent months, Google has increased the weight of related keywords to a search query. In the old days, when a search for a specific keyword is done in Google, only the specific instances of that keyword would count towards a website’s ranking in the search results. This brought along ideals such as keyword density percentages, where on the page the keywords appear, and what type of page elements they appeared in. It seems the way marketers approach search engine optimization is changing.
The weight on keyword density is the first obvious element that looses value when you talk about latent semantic indexing. If you stick to just one keyword and aim for a specific keyword density like you used to do in the old days, then chances are you won’t get the same results you used to. This is because the weight of related keywords on a page has increased, and this affects the ranking for all the related keywords on the page. It may seem confusing at first, but it is a heroic effort to clean up the search results and return more relevant pages for the search query.
To better understand what is happening here, lets say you are looking for shoes. You go to Google and type in the word “running shoes” and start clicking on results. In the old days, you could get more articles and pages that focus on the words “running” and “shoes” but you wouldn’t see many results for jogging shoes, tennis shoes, basketball shoes, or training shoes. The search results would heavily weigh the actual words “jogging” and “shoes” producing very limited results. When you consider related words to “jogging shoes” you open the door for pages to show up in the search results that have ” jogging shoes” in the content, as well as a lot of other types of shoes. The end result tends to be more end-user friendly since the results produce higher quality pages and better options for the query.
If you look at this from a marketing perspective, it make your job a little more difficult if you have been simply cramming keywords into pages to get rankings. Now the proverbial tables have turned, and the search engines are forcing websites to not only include the keyword they are trying to rank for, but to include content around related keywords as well. You can’t just use a thesaurus either and try to manipulate the results, because one of the factors of latent semantic indexing is how closely related the keywords are in the context of the search query.
So what does all this mean? It means that quality content is king. Not just content anymore. If you want to have a successful marketing campaign for your website, you have to throw out the old keyword density tool and start looking at the related keywords. You can find latently related keywords in Google by putting the “~” symbol in front of your desired keyword. Google will highlight the latently related keywords so you can know which ones to use. But be careful and don’t fall into a numbers game again. Write good content and the search engines will reward your efforts.
Search engine optimization has changed, but those of us who have been focused on quality content from the start should actually see an increase in search results rankings. It is always best to stay ahead of the curve when you are talking about search engine marketing. Remember, a few things will always be true when it comes to the search engines: quality content written around multiple keywords is best, varying anchor text for incoming links is best, links form authority sites are best, and the more you contribute to the web, the more you will get back. It really is better to give than to receive.
but who knows, right? I am just wondering if this is a fluke, or if anyone else had noticed this.
