Novel Social Media Concept for 2011: Content is Still King

The social media wave continued to grow in 2010, expanding and receiving a huge amount of attention from the media and web marketing professionals. Hollywood even got into the act with a movie on Facebook, a sure sign that public interest is peaking.


Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many other social media sites, apps and tools gained visitors and have proliferated, chasing both B-to-C consumers and (not in-coincidently) rather large pools of venture capital funds salivating to get into the social media game. One can predict a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle in the next few years involving social media ventures, search engines and email services as visitor behaviors and usage evolve. We've been there before with Web 1.0 and 2.0. Social media giant Facebook is beginning to tower amongst the others in the emerging social media marketing landscape... rivaling and in some ways challenging the search engine giant Google. Linkedin is revolutionizing how we conduct person-to-person introductions, prospecting and business communication. Twitter has established a unique niche, with no competitors in sight.


But what does this mean to technical and industrial B-to-B marketers? While Social Media is growing in importance and is the popular hot topic of the day, Search Engine Marketing continues to matter, churning out vast numbers of valuable business leads. If you are marketing to engineers, scientists, managers, executives and other decision makers and professionals, webpage content is still king, no matter where you put it. These high value prospective clients don't use Facebook or Twitter to do research and find potential vendors... they use Google or Bing.


Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is fundamental to successful lead generation. What is SEO, but great content on a great webpage, on a great website? Have that great content well-linked both inside and outside of a website, keep the content fresh. By adding a modest Paid Search campaign to the mix one can achieve amazing commercial success.


It's perfectly OK to develop a rational Social Media B-to-B presence in 2011, just don't forget search engine content optimization on company websites.

December is a perfect time for SEO updates.

For B-to-B search engine marketing, taking advantage of the relatively quiet period during the last two weeks of December is an excellent time to update and revise your webpages for search engine optimization.

Global business activity drops significantly during late December, and the Christmas and New Year holidays. Take advantage of this seasonal lull by reviewing your webpages, refresh and optimize them, with an eye towards improving and maintaining your valuable and coveted search engine rankings for next year.

Jumping on this task now gives the search engine bots more time to re-index your pages, and hopefully have your webpages placed into an improved position for key search terms when your customers come back to work in January.

If you want blazing B-to-B success in early January, start now. Waiting until Monday morning on January 3 to apply SEO to your webpages is too late. Start now, for success later.

Search Engine Ranking Nirvana: A Transitory State of Bliss.

Achieving smashing success with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great feeling... enjoy it while it lasts, because SEO is a variable treadmill and if one doesn't keep running, organic search ranking results can fall fast and deep. Break out the champagne when you win but don't drink the whole bottle... you need to keep your wits about you. It's a tough SEO world out there!

I  recently enjoyed a grand slam success in SEO on Google. I hit a Trifecta + Bonus... an almost mythologically rare result in Google organic searchdom. Out of over 4,300,000 indexed webpages for an important search term, my related webpages from one website scored 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for organic search. An allied blog I run scored at 4th place. So I acheived 1,2,3,4 for organic search... very nice and exceedingly valuable. To hedge it all, I ran an Adword which ranked 2nd  for paid search ads. So I dominated 5 of the top 6 search engine marketing positions for that search term. In other words, I OWNED that search term on Google. It was MINE.

The short search term discussed above has high strategic value for the business... we cannot accept anything else but a high ranking in Google search.

I continue to dominate that search result today, but the ultra-perfect 1,2,3,4 + 2 result above was from last week, great for bragging rights but of no use today. My reality is what is going on now. And sure enough, this week Google took me down a notch and removed one of my 3 ranked webpages, but graciously allowed me to keep the 1st and 2nd ranked pages plus the blog at 3rd place. Why? Who knows? I can only speculate and take SEO action. The good news is that I still "own" that search at the 1,2 and 3 spots, out of 4.3 million potential competitors. My ad is also now number one, with no changes made to PPC. Now I'm at 1,2,3, + 1.

Go figure. Rankings can change quickly, never take them for granted.

For best results, one must remain alert and vigilant with SEO... total victory today can disintegrate into future disaster tomorrow if a well performing webpage for a competitive search term is neglected.

Every day is an adventure with SEO and Search Engine Marketing. SEO is kind of like a horse race. Make sure you're not betting on "Three Legged Wonder", hoping it wins the race. The Google Search Gods can be capricious... changing, advancing, and demolishing search results on what seems like a whim... using their inscrutable, dynamic and logical search algorithm. Good SEO, relevant content, and constant care and attention to your webpages will greatly help in achieving top rankings.