subject: How Social Web Has Become The Place For Marketing, Recruitment, And Pr [print this page] The search engines and social media are increasingly crossing in so many ways. Both over lap one another's market. Think about what will happen if Google will not anymore exist? This would mean disaster to many website owners. But for those who had been clever enough to use an expanded approach to marketing, it means earning a greater voice in the World Wide Web.
Looking at the trend today, it becomes clear that search engines have distinguished the relevance of social media. In fact, when you look at the search engines results pages (SERPs) today, quite a number comes for social pages. In the same way, social networking sites and other Web 2.0 sites have search boxes on their sites.
Given these fact, you can easily thought, "Just because Google dominates the search market, does this mean it should dominate your marketing strategy too?" Before this can be answered, it is important to look at the following figures:
* More than 200 million people joined Facebook last year
* The second most widely used search engine is not Yahoo, it is YouTube.com
* Based on the report gathered by Nielsen, it was discovered that 90% of consumers trust recommendations, only 14% trust advertisements
* 80% of companies use social media websites in one form or another, 95% of them use LinkedIn
After looking through these facts, it becomes clear that being social is important to any marketing campaign online. Social media is also playing a bigger role in public relations. It is estimated that 89% of all journalists use blogs while 65% are active in using social networks. For the meantime, a growing number is beginning to use Twitter, the figure stands at 52% right now.
There are four ways of using social media to enhance your company profile online. The key is to know how to effectively leverage on social SEO. Below are three steps you should follow:
Listen - know what channels to mine for consumer data. Once you discover this, gather all relevant information and analyse it to understand your target audience better. Aside from finding out which keywords to use, you will also know what kind of language is most appropriate.
Content - the basic ingredient that makes social media special is content. People are keen to interact, communicate, and be updated. Always maintain a consistency in your communications strategy. If you are running a blog or social profile, update it regularly.
Socialise - get to know relevant people. Connect to them and their network. This will enable you to know their needs, wants, and future trends. There are many ways to keep in touch. These include email, RSS, and PR.
