The link between 'search' and 'social media'

Google Wave, for those who haven't yet come across it, is a new platform that blends the massive search power of Google with the collaborative functionality of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Its significance is born out of its simplicity (in user terms at least) and joined-up thinking.

In Google Wave you create a 'wave' and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web, to communicate. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It features concurrent rich-text editing, where you can see almost instantly on your screen what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. It suits both quick messaging and persistent content — making it an ideal medium for collaboration and communication. You can even click on a 'playback' button to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

And it's free.

Social media savvy

If today's marketers are to extract maximum value from their social investment they must learn how to manipulate social media and understand how it can be made to work in support of other areas of digital marketing, such as search engine optimisation (see separate article on SEO).

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing are now frequently used by specifiers when researching products, services and brands. Yet more often than not it's the comments, posts, reviews and recommendations of others – all social media conversations – that rank highly within search engines. Marketers must therefore recognise that SEO and social media have become inextricably linked, because these conversations can have a huge influence on the way your business is represented online.

SEO and social media working together

Marketers must treat SEO and social media as one. When looking at blog posts, comments and campaigns – anything you place within social media – ensure that it's optimised in such a way that it can be easily found and indexed by search engines.

Content on corporate websites should be optimised for sharing among readers and for ease of social media 'bookmarking'. This will encourage the proliferation of organic links – all at no cost – in ways that will boost page ranking. For example, creating useful product content (with links) that can easily be 're-Tweeted' may lead to it being shared on Twitter, other social platforms and even blogs, each one generating new links back to your product page and boosting your page rank for all associated keywords.

To increase the search and social potential of your company consider developing a social media press room, where all news, technical updates and case studies are search engine and social media optimised for distribution among Twitter, Linked In and SlideShare. Doing so will help raise your profile on those platforms used by your target audience. Case studies can also be bookmarked within sites such as Delicious, Digg and Reddit, further extending brand exposure and reach.

All that said, it remains about the message, not the medium

Always remember that useful, relevant and creative content is most likely to generate organic links. Think of it as social currency being shared among personal and professional networks. Creative content initiates conversation, which generates links, which are rewarded by the higher positioning of your products and services within search engines.

All of the above will assist in managing your brand's online reputation. Properly optimised content in blog posts will push negative posts and comments down the rankings and move positive comments up. Adopting an integrated approach to SEO and social media will stretch your content and budgets further, and potentially create new business opportunities through non paid-for search activity.

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