LB's Rambles

Looking for Twitter Followers - As a Job Qualification

There has been a fair amount of discussion in the various emails and newsletters over the past couple of days over companies that are looking for social media-savvy workers and using the number of Twitter followers as one determining qualification. MediaPost's Online Media Daily has a good writeup pointing to BestBuy's recent search for someone with at least 250 Twitter followers, not to mention Facebook friends and a year's experience at blogging.

Does that kind of thing make you a more savvy social media person? Maybe. This blog is a couple of years old (and to those few of you who read it regularly, my thanks!), and I have about 300 people following @LesBlatt - but am I better qualified for a job in social media than someone with different qualifications? Take a look at some of the comments on that MediaPost item. What do you think?

Twitter: Serious About Search

There's been a lot of speculation in recent weeks about Twitter's growth as a search engine - and as a possible eventual challenger to Google. I'm not convinced that it will reach that point - Google's pretty solidly entrenched and its massive index is pretty thorough. But there's a great deal of chatter today both on and off Twitter about changes under way to that service's search engine. Mashable has one of the best writeups, with full details.

If Twitter IS serious about search, as it now seems to be, that could explain some of the sudden increase in speculation about possible acquisition deals, in which major players including Google and Apple are said to be bidding for Twitter - and Twitter is said to be uninterested in takeovers. We'll see...

Search and Social Media

At our panel discussion of social marketing this week at Baruch College, there was a lot of discussion about the blurring lines between social media and search, and the prediction that we will see more of a merger between them - and, in particular, that social media is the "new search."

David Berkowitz of the digital marketing agency 360i has something to say about that in his new column for MediaPost's SocialMediaInsider newsletter. As he has been writing MediaPost's Search Insider column for more than 4 years now, I think he brings a good rational perspective to the discussion, with some pretty clear arguments about the similarities - and differences.

Measuring the Impact of Social Media

Investing money, time and energy on a social media campaign for your business will, sooner or later, persuade your bosses and/or clients to ask you: why? How can you demonstrate that the return on investment (ROI) makes this new media usage worthwhile?

It all comes down to metrics again. So here is an incredibly complete and good list of tools, statistics and articles which will help the dedicated marketing pro show the ROI on social media, courtesy of Interactive Insights Group's Robin Broitman.

Note that this list is NOT aimed at beginners (although newcomers to social media will find some excellent ideas here) - it's aimed at people who are deeply involved both in social media marketing plans and in the reporting and measurement of the impact of their campaigns.

Hat tip: Measurement guru Katie Paine (via Twitter and a retweet from @rgbroitman). 

Searching for Blog Search

I have had several occasions recently where I've wanted to search the blogosphere for articles on a particular topic. To say that the job has been difficult is a gross understatement. Technorati's blog search rarely works as it should; Google's is essentially non-discriminatory, making it of very limited use.

What's a writer/editor/reader to do? Well, here are some suggestions from ReadWriteWeb - but they seem to be saying the same thing I am saying: no matter which search engine you use, the prospects for a successful search seem to be pretty limited. Someday - soon, I hope - there will be a better way to do blog searches. Anybody want to make that a priority this year?

Hat tip: Sally Falkow, via Twitter

Pandora Opens the Box

Pandora, in this case, is ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which has voted to open up top level domains to just about anything that just about anyone might want.

That means that in addition to the established top-level domains, such as .com, .net and .org, and the additional domains opened up fairly recently, such as .tv, you will soon be able to open it up to just about any three-letter-or-more word or abbreviation you like.

Sell a lot of tchotchkes? Maybe you want to open up /MyBrand.tchotchkes/ for yourself. Of course, anyone else who wants to use that top-level tchotchkes domain may have to negotiate rights with you. But that's just the beginning of the potential headaches.

So before you get in line, take a look at comments by Rob Garner, strategy director for iCrossing, on MediaPost's Search Insider blog. If you're an established brand, you may want to think a bit before rushing out to make your brand a new top-level domain - because it will have a tremendous impact on your search visibility, especially if you already have your brand out there, building up its great position on Google.

Garner's post - and the comments on it - might give you some fairly sober second thoughts about the whole process. We live in interesting times. And there's a reason why that is generally considered a curse...

Making SEO More Relevant

Jeff Jarvis has a thought-provoking post on BuzzMachine today, questioning the future of Search Engine Optimization as Google becomes more sophisticated about tailoring search results to the individual needs of each searcher. Those of us who encourage that sort of thing by making our search histories available to Google are getting much more relevant results pages when we search.

But does that mean that SEO is finished? I don't think so. As several of the commenters on Jeff's thread point out, it's more likely that we'll see a shift in the way SEO is done, to optimize it for as many potential customers (users, readers, whatever) as possible. It may get more difficult for marketers to game the system - and that's a plus, as far as I'm concerned. But marketers and site designers will have to use increasingly sophisticated SEO techniques to try to ensure that their sites wind up on the first page of my results - and the results of people with similar needs but different preferences.

"Googlewiki Vs. Ajaygoogle"

Over at Search Insider, David Berkowitz honeymoons in India and discovers that there is still much to be said for a non-electronic version of search...

Using Search to Stop Scammers

Over at MediaPost's Search Insider blog, David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy at 360i, has a fascinating article on what seems to me to be an ingenious use of both social media and SEO to stop a particularly nasty real estate scam.

Briefly, a friend of Berkowitz got some suspicious emails from a scammer who was using CraigsList real estate transactions as a way to try to cheat people out of thousands of dollars. Berkowitz basically took the story, along with the complete email exchanges, and posted them on his blog. He did so not for regular readers of his blog, who might or might not ever run across these scammers, but for four "readers" in particular: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask. He figured - correctly - that if the search engines "saw" his posts, then, in time, other people, who might be searching for information about suspicious real estate deals would see his postings as well - and be warned off. And, he says, that's exactly what happened.

As I say, it strikes me as a great use of social media, to spread the word about the scam - and a terrific way to use SEO beyond the normal site/product marketing. The comments on the Search Insider blog (see that link above) suggest that he's struck a nerve here - and I say, good for him!

On the Way Home, Pick Up Some SEM at the Store?

Is Search Engine Marketing an art or a science? While we're having that debate, we should probably consider one fact: SEM is now a commodity - and, as Search Engine Journal tells us, it's on sale at Wal-Mart's bulk stores, Sam's Club. Small businesses are encouraged to buy some kind of SEM program via Sam's Club's "LeadConnect" program. For somewhere between $25 and $100 a month, they get submission to various search engines (for whatever good that may do) plus a few other simple techniques.

SEJ's editor, Loren Baker, wonders if this is a good or bad thing for the SEM industry as a whole. I'm not sure, but I think it's more proof that an awful lot of businesses out there still don't understand the tremendous changes taking place in the business world as a result of our improved communications skills and techniques. These are the same companies which, only a few years back, were still wondering whether they really needed to be on that Internet thing. Now, they are wondering why they need an experienced search marketing firm to help them when they can buy "the same services" from Sam's Club for $25 or so every month, not that it  seems to be helping them much.

The commenters on SEJ have it right. There will always be bottom-line types who care only about the price. SEM needs to be sold on the value, not the price. It's all part of the long, slow educational process. As communicators, most of us have a long way to go to help others understand.

Hat tip: MediaPost