In re: Scoble, Real-time web, Google, Friends

Over on Scobleizer.com Robert stirred up a lot of commenting with his article titled “Is the real-time web a threat to Google search? http://scobleizer.com/2009/02/09/is-the-real-time-web-a-threat-to-google-search/ . Feb 09, 2009
The few people who read my blog already know that I believe the answer is yes. In one of my early posts on my blog at I made the comment "Social Media will be the single most important force in driving social, cultural, political, economic and environmental change from now on. " That thought certainly carries over to how we use the internet in general and the trusted friends vs Google reality. Real-time web is a by product of our trusted friends circle.
The thread Scoble started created a lot interesting dialogue that opens the door to much other discussion and I just want to touch on some of that for future reference. His well founded premise is simply that information from “trusted friends” is more well received than information from a source such as Google. His examples were very concentric to a small group of other sites and services and some of the ensuing convo became focused on this site vs that site, rather than analyzing the trusted friend vs Google premise. The fact that the sites he relies primarily on FriendFeed and Twitter should not obfuscate the primary point. Those sites are where he is most likely to engage with his trusted circle, but the idea is generic to any site from MySpace to the local gamers 24 member ning site. It just depends on where an individual’s friends are.
One of the things that I commonly see in blog posting and commenting is a sort of tunnel vision dependant on an individual’s particular specialty or expertise. These questions are better viewed from the much broader perspective of how things work for the average internet user, not how it works for the super-connected, ultra tech literati such as Scoble and his peers. Most user won’t run sophisticated searches of their friends posts and comments – they will just ask each other.
Google did a great thing. It made a lot of money doing it. And it has still not run it’s course; but the social networking world has exploded since google revolutionized search, and it is rapidly losing its effectiveness and efficiency – the cornerstones of its usefulness. (I do not address here the major shortcomings that google has always had that were designed into their algorithm to increase their profits).
Once I am connected in my social networking spaces, everything that I might previously have searched on google for is available to me through my “friends”. Somewhere, one of them has already “been there – done that” and I will rely on them to guide me to my goal-of-the-moment. If I want to buy a new camera I’ll ask Chris at http://chris.pirillo.com/ . If I want to find information about reducing my carbon footprint I will ask my friends at http://www.care2.com or http://greenopolis.com/ . etc. I don’t use google to find information.
The relevance of google and its skewed search results will continue to decline as more people become more connected. Google, already busily engaged in finding new revenue streams, will continue to evolve and likely become a leader in some area well beyond the scope of a search engine company.
This brings me back to why I started my blog to begin with. seo is little. IMS is big. In fact SEO is dying. It is one of the least effective means for promoting a company, product or philosophy. Social Media Trumps.
The power created by increasing the availability of information, and the ability to engage with others more easily has unlimited potential. It’s here. It’s now. It is up to each of us to broaden our horizons and see how we can use this power to create a better humanity.

Why IMS is better than SEO and SEM

Click here to see how one of my clients has 5 of the top ten google hits for one of his major keyword phrases 5 out of ten page one hits on googleWe accomplished this with only 30% of our optimization plans in place! How did we do it?
Internet Marketing Strategies It's a whole new world, from the days when SEO was king.SEO basically creates a relationship between your website and the search engines.AdWords campaign are often called SEM. They capitalize on the relationship SEO created and add in a relationship to Ads you create and where those ads will appear throughout the internet. SEM is a small niche that probably gets more hype than it deserves, but it cannot be discounted without some detailed analysis. I like to say that SEM is most useful when it is icing on a well made cake.IMS (internet marketing strategies) is the much broader discipline of using multiple internet marketing opportunities. Social Networking, NewsFeeds, registries, bookmarking, Blogs, forums, Banner ads, affiliate marketing, link exchange, value add relationships, press release distribution, and a plethora of other opportunities.
As you can see on the screen shot of the google page the clients direct site is one of the five hits. Two of the others are Press releases. There is one craigslist ad and one is a forums post. This is IMS. Understand the goal. Some sites are not focused on revenue generation, but for those that are, there is only one goal - increased revenue. Most often that means increased traffic, but traffic is not the goal, traffic is a means to reach the goal. The overriding focus of people trying to increase traffic has been to get on googles first page of search results for the clients keywords.
From SEO came SEM. With SEM the focus was to place clients ads on sites that had content that was relevant to the subject of the ad, all over the internet. The idea being that the if the site visitor was interested in a pages content he or she would also be interested in an ad on a relevant subject.
The ad providers charge a fee for matching the ad with the content on the page. The owner of the page gets a cut for making page space available. Thus, SEM requires budget. Its a gazillion dollar business so a lot of companies are budgeting for SEM. Some are budgeting a lot. It is a more focused form of advertising than highway billboards. Highway billboards are seen by a lot of people, but only a small percentage are interested in the product advertised on the billboard at the time they pass it. With SEM, the site visitor has indicated a predisposition to be receptive to the ad, because they are interested in the content the ads are related to. But for a variety of reasons, thousands of people who are interested in the page content do not click on the ads. In fact only a small percentage do.
IMS to the rescue! IMS is based on the strategy that if you put your company/site info everywhere you can, and get plugged into huge internet communities that can further disseminate the information throughout their personal networks, you will get more exposure, more focused exposure and that exposure is presented in so many formats that people with aversions to some things (like ads) will find the same information in a format that is more acceptable to them.
While there is no direct cost with most IMS efforts there is still the man hours cost of having someone spend hours and hours on the internet, registering, joining, adding friends, posting, submitting, commenting etc. etc.
Someone who has a system that increase the efficiency of all the activity neccesary to achieve great results with IMS will be an immeasurable value to the people who engage him. I have that system.
The major challenge of IMS is to winnow through thousands of possibilities and find the ones that will bring the most return for the total cost of engagement. A couple that I really like would be getting your link on an article on a major media site or getting a prominent link on a site that gets 100,000+ hits a month on a related keyword. So stay tuned as I refine IMS and report on how I am applying IMS for clients and the results we get.

Internet is Good. Life is Good

I got into SEO when I was marketing director at a small struggling company. I made the website (it was awful!) and then I started trying to figure out how to get people to go there. I tried everything and little by little I began to get results. After awhile I began to understand what was producing results and what was not. It was intriguing and I stayed with it, learning to get better results. Soon, other people were asking me how to do it for their sites. "A GREAT OPPORTUNITY" came along and I left that job, but people I knew who had websites still called and I keep up with SEO as the internet continued to involve.
The great opportunity turned out to be not so great and after it ran its course I was once again looking for means to support myself. Soon, I was doing SEO as a full time business and things were going well. There is an S and an E in SEO for a reason. It is a marketing discipline focused on Search Engines. But internet marketing had exploded into thousands of potential avenues to drive internet traffic. Social networking, bookmarking, forums, registries, press release distribution, and now twitter and mobile 2.0.
I began aggregating these various potential traffic driving resources on a spreadsheet and began applying them to some of my clients accounts. The results were rapid, and encouraging. I still do SEO....it is a small and important part of my larger and more successful Internet Marketing Strategies i.e. “IMS program”.
Businesses that are SEO conscious are in a good position to embrace a larger Internet Marketing Strategy. Proper application of IMS is strategic. It will be different for every company. B2B companies face different challenges than b2c companies.
I know a guy who is making a good buck doing b2b on the internet. He has a pretty good spend on Adwords and he is satisfied with the return. But he knows he is missing a lot of good sales and he knows his site could be optimized better. We started talking about SEO and the broader discipline of IMS. As a business case, it just makes sense. If mediocre optimization and an Adwords campaign produce x, then it stands to reason that increased optimization will bring about an increase, perhaps 2x, and IMS could bring even more. 3x? 4x? Will let you know in a few months. Internet is good. Life is good.

SEO is little, IMS is BIG

Welcome to Social Media Trumps my blog on Internet Marketing Strategies (IMS). It's a whole new world, from the days when SEO was king.
SEO basically creates a relationship between your website and the search engines.
AdWords campaign are often called SEM. They capitalize on the relationship SEO created and add in a relationship to Ads you create and where those ads will appear throughout the internet. SEM is a small niche that probably gets more hype than it deserves, but it cannot be discounted without some detailed analysis. I like to say that SEM is most useful when it is icing on a well made cake.
IMS (internet marketing strategies) is the much broader discipline of using multiple internet marketing opportunities. Social Networking, NewsFeeds, registries, bookmarking, Blogs, forums, Banner ads, affiliate marketing, link exchange, value add relationships, press release distribution, and a plethora of other opportunities. The major challenge of IMS is to winnow through thousands of possibilities and find the ones that will bring the most return for the total cost of engagement. A couple that I really like would be getting your link on an article on a major media site or getting a prominent link on a site that gets 100,000+ hits a month on a related keyword.After six months of applying social media engagement to business marketing,(with several and various side tracks and distracations) it has become clear, that social media trumps all other efforts.