Social is the new SEO thanks to the democracy of the Internet

Social as the new SEO

The year 2009 might be remembered as the turning point for Internet as the social techniques – social media have become the new SEO for marketing websites.
Previously the black art of traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) where
- Keywords, meta tags, description, internal links in the website
- The Page Rank defined by the importance of links
Ruled the game and were the measurement for the findability of any website.

Most of these parameters could be kept under control by the company or website owner. In most cases spending more money would mean higher SERP rankings.

Real-time and social media

Since the rise of Blogs, forums and Twitter the traditional SEO is no longer.

The democracy of the Internet is now more important:
The more people talk about your website, brand, products, solutions or services the higher you will rank.

The number of mentions on the Internet is taken as indicator of popularity and importance.
Even if people post negative reviews and comments about your brand or products, the ranking in search results will increase.

Additionally the real-time has become even more important as there is a war ongoing between Twitter, Bing and Google to present the most relevant and up-to-date (real-time) information in their searches.

Democracy of the Internet

On the other hand people both at home as consumers and in companies use the Internet to find solutions to their problems, demands or needs, will select possible brands or vendors on the Internet and could even make decisions for buying using the Internet.
All without any interference of company sales people!
Reviews, advices and comments on social media have become most important in purchase decisions in B2C and B2B.
This is the democracy of the Internet with the evolution to social media marketing.

These changes pose a tremendous problem for marketing and brand managers as they are no longer in control and throwing massive amounts of money on advertising will not show up in search engine results or even generate more interest from potential customers.
It is time to take a walk on the wild side of marketing: social media marketing.

The interruption-marketing using interruptive-advertising (display ads) are no longer the success formula as people get better in blocking them out. Still these marketing methods will stay in existence: direct mail, broadcast advertising (radio, tv), billboards, print advertising, …

Social media brings data overload

Disruptive change brings the new problem of figuring out how to leverage and use all the possible social techniques and social media available for reaching the potential customers. It is not just learning to use all the tools of social media as it is also about optimizing the social media techniques for customer awareness and customer acquisition.

Using social media is very time consuming as individual people need to be behind every statement or information that is published on the Internet.
Moreover as the produced and published amounts of information and data about a brand or product are becoming massive, it cannot be controlled by a company any more. It is data overload.

The damage control is even harder to do as just one person can publish negative information that will spread faster than positive news or information.

The challenges for marketing and brand managers just got almost impossible thanks to real-time social media that have become premium importance for Google, Bing and Twitter.

The disruptive social media will change your marketing for ever.