By Nicole Fletcher

It truly baffles me how even today, at the end of 2010, people are still completely blind to the wonderful world of social media and the endless list of possibilities this exciting new industry brings. I get that people ‘don’t have time to tweet‘, ‘don’t care what their sister’s friend ate for breakfast’ or simply ‘think this whole thing is just a fad’ – but everyone is on Facebook and everyone is inundated by the web daily. Why then are people so against learning about and taking advantage of all this new age of tech wonder has to offer?

I’m not one for conformity, after all, my personal blog is called Deviate From the Norm…but it seems clear to me that, unlike palazzo pants and bedazzled denim, Social Media is here to stay and some people just can’t, or won’t, accept that. People talk about the social verse like it’s some uncool food item in the nerdy kids’ lunchbox; like it’s something tacky or lame that the popular kids will soon force into extinction. I’m here to tell you, as Jacob Tyler’s new Social Media Director, it’s not. It’s here to stay and if you aren’t on it, well frankly, we’ll take off full speed into the future without you.

This new age of marketing that we are all so fortunate to be witnessing first hand, is just starting to bloom and grow. Social Media has totally redefined marketing, as your clients and customers can now take an active stance toward…or against your brand. With the billboards and television commercials of yesteryear, businesses never heard a peep from their clientele, who essentially hold the fate of their brand in their hands. Now, corporations, small businesses and public figures alike get to hear, see and feel it all. The truth might hurt…but better to hear it loud and clear in bold black and white, than not at all.

If you’re a business small or large you MUST know that you are not above this. You MUST take advantage of the marketing tools available to you for if you don’t, your competition surely will and probably already has. Most people don’t understand Twitter and I get that. I guarantee though, if you spend some time educating yourself, you’ll learn that thousands if not millions of people are already talking about exactly what you do for a living, or think about, or eat, or believe and those people should be on your radar as prospective clients and friends. The simple lesson is this: you must develop a presence for yourself..or hire someone to handle your social media for you. Most of the most modern marketing tools are available to you at no cost but your time, effort and passion. One of the most basic marketing fundamentals centers around ‘being your brand’ so if you’re not willing to give it some love, how can you possibly expect to succeed? If I haven’t convinced you on the vitality of this rapidly growing industry, here are some stats to gnaw on.

-500 million people are on Facebook
-Human beings spend 700 billion minutes on Facebook per month
-30+ billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month
-24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing declines in circulations- shock gasp
-There are over 200 million blogs
-More than 600 million searches take place on Twitter each month
-Lady Gaga has 7.2+ million followers on Twitter to date.

Get the point? Social Media is here to stay, so learn about it before we’re so far down the futuristic highway that there’s no hope of catching up.

A lot of marketers, once they figure out that social networking might be able to help their business, rush out to join every site they can find. As wonderful as their enthusiasm is, this is usually a bad idea. That’s because, as with most business activities, it’s a good idea to have a specific plan – and end goal – in mind before you start investing a lot of time and effort into it.

Spending your time wisely

Social networking is a very, very big field. You could easily spend all of your hours working on it. Would that be worth it for your business, though? For 99% or more of us, the answer would be a definite “no.” The trick, then, is in figuring out where the sweet spot is: we need to know what we’re trying to accomplish, and how we’re going to do that, before we begin.

I have already mentioned that the three biggest aims of social network marketing tend to be deepening customer relationships, finding referrals, and increasing your search engine profile. Which of those is most important to you? It’s likely that you’ll want to accomplish a little bit of each, but at the same time, realize that one of those goals is normally going to take priority over the others. And whichever one it is will dictate which tasks are most important.

Deepening customer relationships

If your major goal is to get closer to buyers, then you’re going to want to concentrate on putting out a steady stream of communication, as well as emphasizing depth in your social profiles. What does that actually mean? Usually, it means that you are going to enhance your online brand by letting customers take a peek behind the curtain. Whether you are a micro-sized startup or a multinational conglomerate, you’re going to try to engage your clients with a bit of personality. Your emphasis will be on getting to know people better, and vice versa, which makes you less of a vendor and more of an advisor or a friend.

Finding new referrals

When you’re looking to make and take contacts via social networking, you’ll want to take a slightly different approach. You’ll still need interesting profiles and frequent communication, but everything you do should be tilted towards widening the net a bit. Instead of beginning one-on-one conversations online, why not start a forum for feedback, or try to create “viral” material that’s likely to be passed on amongst friends and colleagues? It’s not hard to find new clients by using social networking sites and ideas, but it does take a conscious effort.

Search engine positioning

As with the other two major goals, some improvement in your search engine rankings is bound to come from a consistent social networking effort. But if crawling to the top of Google, Yahoo, and Bing is your primary goal, then your focus is going to be on a steady stream of interesting, keyword-rich content being distributed and linked throughout your social networking profiles. Because sites like Facebook and Twitter are being increasingly used by search engine spiders, adding new articles, videos, and other media can be a great way to improve your company’s SEO rankings.

In marketing – whether it’s online or off – it’s never a bad idea to “go to the people.” If you can find a venue where lots of your buyers are hanging out, it only stands to reason that you should be there, too.

The biggest argument for using social network marketing as a tool for finding new customers can actually be summed up that simply. Of course, there are other benefits, too, and we touched on some of those in the last section. You should definitely be looking to deepen the ties you have with your existing customers, not to mention improve your search engine positioning… but if you’re like most companies or self-employed professionals, opening new accounts is going to be your biggest concern.

Just how many potential accounts are out there? Let’s have a quick look at the numbers:

Facebook, possibly the “king” of all social networking sites (not counting myspace, which has more members and a longer track record, but little commercial value for most of us since it tends to be popular with teens), boasts more than 500 million members – including 175 million who log on every day, and 100 million who access the site through mobile devices. That’s an awful lot of prospects, no matter what business you’re in.

While not at Facebook’s level, Twitter has more than 105 million users and is gaining ground at the rate of 300,000 new members every day. That’s more than 50 million tweets daily, covering members’ views on business, sports, politics, personal life, and everything else under the sun.

It would be easy to think of LinkedIn as a “smaller” social networking site, given that it only has around 50 million registered users, but that number misses the point. Because it’s focused on professionals, networking, and business topics, LinkedIn is the straight up shot to Facebook’s cocktail – a more concentrated venue for social network marketing. It’s a place to do business and meet others to do business with; you don’t have to contend with people looking to catch up with family and friends there.

The rest of the social networking market is as hard to define as it is to measure. Some would count YouTube, which registers upwards of a billion hits each day; others would mention blogs, as well as sites like Digg.com, Stumbleupon, or Flickr, but none of these are important enough to detail on their own… yet.

The point to take away isn’t that these secondary sites don’t matter, but that the social networking market is huge, and growing all the time. It could be that next year will bring a more popular venue; how many of us thought Twitter would be a major force just a few years ago, or that Facebook would become a hot place to advertise? If you’re going to use social networking effectively, you’re going to have to stay on top of these trends and adjust, but luckily the strategies that work with today’s major players translate to other sites, as well, so you just need to get the fundamentals down.

By Les Kollegian
Jacob Tyler Creative Group

Jacob Tyler and our sister company SEO Town handle Search Engine Optimization for a broad base of clients. The thing about SEO is that it’s not only a process that is 100% iterative, it’s also always a 100% learning experience. Keeping up with the brilliant minds at Google is not always an easy task even though they offer to help through support documents, forums, and more. For those of you out there who are saying “what about Bing and Yahoo?”… they have their place but they don’t hold a search “candle” to that of Google. This isn’t just because of their market share, but mostly because of the quality of their search algorithms. Thus, as a creative marketing agency, we put most of our emphasis on creating leads for our clients from Google and now even YouTube, the world’s second most searched search engine.

So now we get to a question we have been asking recently. Why are search results sometimes different on different systems and how can we accurately track where we rank organically in the eyes of our customers? Great question! Not so easy answer.

The good and bad:
Google does an amazing job of making searches for users relevant to their preferences by automatically personalizing the results. While this can be GREAT for the typical Web browser, it makes finding “true” search results a little more difficult. Here’s why.

In the past, the only way to receive better or “preferred/personal” results was to sign up for personalized search. Now, you can get customized results whenever you use Google. Depending upon whether or not you’re signed in to a Google Account when you search, the information they use for customizing your experience will be different:

Signed-in personalization: When you’re signed in, Google personalizes your search experience based on your Web History. If you don’t want to receive personalized results while you’re signed in, you can turn off Web History and remove it from your Google Account. You can also view and remove individual items from your Web History. At Jacob Tyler, we recommend our clients disable personalization on their own systems to get the most accurate search results. Otherwise, Google may place YOUR link toward the top of your results pages based on your previous search and clicks. See the image below on how to delete your Web history/personalization.

Signed-out customization: When you’re not signed in, Google customizes your search experience based on past search information linked to your browser, using a cookie. Google stores up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser’s cookie, including queries and results you click.

Because many people might search from a single computer, the browser cookie may be associated with more than one person’s search activity. For this reason, Google doesn’t provide a method for viewing this signed-out search activity. If you don’t want to receive customized results while you are signed out, you can turn off these search customizations. See the image below to turn off cookies for signed out searches.

Of course, deleting cookies effects a LOT on your system including personal site preferences related to browsing, passwords, purchases, and more so you may or may not want to do this depending on “easy” you want your browsing experiences to be. For more information on how to control cookies, please visit http://www.aboutcookies.org

Here’s an illustration of the information Google uses in each case:

At this point, most of the internet browsing population is using Internet Explorer or Firefox for their day-to-day surfing and information. While it may make sense to turn off cookies and web history for those interested in the most “neutral” and true results, it’s also a pain and erases information that each user wants stored for future use. I recommend downloading another browser to use for your specific searches to determine organic ranking. For example, download Google Chrome and set up the browser to run in “incognito mode“. Once this is set up, customization and personalization features are turned off and you can just stick to this browser for your rank checking curiosity.

If you’d rather stick to your current Firefox and IE browsers, there is also a plug-in you can download from Yoast that makes it simple to disable personalization.

For any business, it is extremely important to stay on top of your current search engine rankings. To do so, you must avoid personalized search as you may end up seeing different rankings on different computers. While this is a great search feature, it will not provide useful insight for your SEO marketing campaigns.