Just as Google announced it’s new Caffeine search indexing algorithm that has been improved to keep up with up-to-the-minute content from the social media, web traffic analysts, web analysts Hitwise have broken the news that people in the UK are visiting the social networks more often than the search engines.
Take a look at the graph below to see how UK search engine traffic has remained more or less constant in the last few years, compared to the steady and apparently unstoppable rise in popularity of the social networks. Already in March of this year, Facebook surpassed Google in web traffic in the US, and it seems that this trend is spreading around the globe.
The implications of this phenomenon are pretty obvious if you’re working to improve your business’ online visibility: you simply cannot afford to ignore the social media any more! The emphasis has always been on Search Engine Optimisation, but having a strong presence in the social media is now at least as important as getting those coveted top search engine rankings.
If you’re still lagging behind on social media marketing, you really need to get on board right away. Those of you who have already started need to redouble your efforts.
So here’s what you need to do:
- Understand that social media marketing is not a waste of time. It’s your most powerful free marketing tool.
- Get up to speed on how to make social network marketing work for your business.
- If anyone in your company is still reluctant to embrace the social media as a powerful marketing tool, show them this post and hit out at the 7 deadly excuses for not using social media marketing, demolishing them one by one.
- Follow these 8 easy steps to get started in social media marketing.
- Urge key members of your staff to spend at least 15 minutes a day working on your social media marketing. Better still, build a habit of using any spare time you have to connect with the masses and get the word out there.
While Facebook and Google battle for the crown of web dominance, you really should be actively staking our your territory both in the search engines and on the online social networks. Keep in mind that social marketing largely consists of building online communities of people who talk about your company and refer new business. These can be local communities if your business is local in nature, or they can be worldwide communities of potential customers if you operate on a global scale. It doesn’t matter. The principle of social media remains the same. It’s about sharing information and opinions – friends telling friends – and that what makes this kind of word-of-mouth marketing so powerful. It’s perceived as being extremely trustworthy.
Social media marketing is also practically free, and it’s something your staff can quickly learn to do themselves. Best of all, much of your social media activity will get indexed by the search engines, so you are actually killing two birds with one stone, reaching the online masses and the search engines at the same time.
Social media really is where it’s at! Can you afford to opt out?
