“A dramatic transition is taking place in social media marketing. Those who recognize the transition and plan accordingly will thrive – while those who don’t will be left behind.”

 

Marketing Sherpa – February 2010

 

 

 

One of the questions that is being asked is “why doesn’t the website show up in the search?” The primary answer is Internet marketing has made a quantum shift in the last year. Google and all the other major search engines change their algorithm or search formula almost weekly. Their main objective is to present the most current information so they can charge for advertising.

 

 

In this era of social media you cannot have a static website and sit back and wait for people to find you. You must have a dynamic, interactive site with fresh and constantly changing content. That’s what people want and that’s what the search engines give. You must build a community!

 

 

To even get on the Google map you need to have client reviews with the search engines favorite review site. For Google that’s CitySearch, for Bing its Yelp, and so on.

 

 

 

 

In a word “The Future”. This is a new decade and a new century and Internet marketing continues to evolve. While the basics are still important (design, fast loading, search engine optimized) that is just the beginning. Today’s Internet is a conversation, a community. In his book The Nature of Marketing, Chuck Brymer makes the analogy that today we need to market to “the swarm”. Consumers are much like a flock of birds or school of fish, they dip and turn together.

 

 

People flock to Amazon.com to not only buy books, but to read the reviews. When I’m planning a trip I go to TripAdvisor to find out what hotels, restaurants and entertainment other people have reviewed. As mentioned above, Google and Bing decide which companies are going to show up on the map, based on the reviews.

 

 

Marketing Sherpa released the “Social Marketing Benchmark Report” a survey of over 2,300 marketers. Here are some of the results:

 

 

 

 

The remarkable thing about this chart is, while there is a severe pull back in marketing budgets, social networking budgets are skyrocketing.

 

 

 

 

 

This is an interesting diagram. Blogging and blogger relations require the most effort and are also the most effective, while the majority of marketers focus on social networks and multi media content sharing (read YouTube) the least effective tools.

 

 

 

 

“For medical spas, plastic surgeons and dermatologist, this represents a change in the way you need to market in order to get in front of your potential patient population. Yellow pages, newspaper… gone. Search, blogs, social networks allow you to harness technology and get it in front of your potential patients; women 35-60.”

 

 

 

 

 

These are just some ideas to provide a starting point. As you can see, social marketing can be fun and is limited by your own imagination (or not!). The good news is it works, and works very well.

 

 

While social media is low cost, or in most cased no-cost, they do require time and attention. It would be a waste of resources to build a Facebook page and just let it die. Likewise, a static website is so “last century” (my favorite expression).