Posted on April 1, 2009
The Relationship Between Social Media and Search
BY JASON CORMIER
Kudos to Peter Hershberg regarding his insight on what social media means to search, along with his explanation on the three evolutionary waves of search.
It seems not that long ago (middle of this decade), I was writing quite a bit about how relevant search results had evolved through Google's PageRank concept - what Peter refers to as Search 2.0.
And now here we are talking about Search 3.0 - relevance based on personal networks and the filtering of data through online social graphs, ultimately strengthened as more people connect with each other via the web.
When you consider the technology (RSS) supporting the distribution of information or updates within online social networks like Facebook and Twitter - I think we actually began seeing the infancy of Search 3.0 nearly two years ago through Google's Universal Search algorithm update (see basics of how Google's indexing changed in image below).
Another glimpse of Search 3.0 could be recognized with Stanford's 2008 Study on (Delicious) social bookmarking. Three highlights from the study included the following:
- 25% of posts through Deicious are pages that have yet to be indexed by search engines.
- 35% of URLs submitted are first-time submissions (roughly 120,00 URLs submitted per day).
- Tags are considered 93% relative to associated content.
What does it all mean? People, not search engines, are assigning relevance to content. Whether they know it or not, it's their keywords, their descriptions and their opinions that are making the impact.
Now consider how your opinion is shaped to people you are actually connected (networked) to online. Granted, some connections are stronger than others (Peter refers to three kinds of online connections in his Ad Age post) - but all are still highly relevant because they are ultimately chosen by you.
Bottom line: Marketing and PR folks need to get what this is about - and if you are a "social media expert", then you really need to be on it.
Posted on February 19, 2009
Social Media ROI - A Podcast with David Meerman Scott
BY JASON CORMIER
Listen to our Podcast:
Show Notes:
Room 214 Co-Founder, Jason Cormier, interviews best-selling author and online marketing thought leader, David Meerman Scott.
In this podcast, we discuss:
1. Old-school measurement for ROI: What is really a "lead?" People want to apply same measures to social media. Traditional measures are being applied to social media marketing when so many other aspects of business simply don't. Example: What's the ROI of the receptionist, or even the accounting department for that matter?
2. We can measure how many people are exposed to our ideas, downloaded our YouTube video, etc. but these are very different measurements compared to traditional ROI measurements.
3. David states that ultimately, the ROI argument is used as an excuse based in fear. Many companies are simply afraid of social media.
4. David's new book, World Wide Rave: How ideas spread and why people talk about you and your company. The first step in the formula for success is very counter-intuitive to marketers: Nobody cares about your products except you. To create something that has potential to spread, you can't talk about these things. As soon as your product is brought into the equation, nobody cares.
5. Key take-away: Doing lots of activities in online marketing as opposed to one or just a few, should be the expectation when it comes to increasing your chances of success.
Notes: You can check out David's blog at WebInkNow.com. I really enjoyed this interview, and am looking forward to reading his new book.
I know there is already a great deal of information on this, but it keeps coming up in client conversations. Since one of our clients recently requested that we create a checklist, I'm posting a version of it here to share with you all. As always, feel free to add your input too!
