I’m the proud father of four children, ages 11-17. As an Internet Marketer, it goes without saying that there are plenty of computers around the house, and almost always a child parked in front of one at any time.
Children of this age make terrific guinea pigs. They are awesome resources that can find things online that even a seasoned SEO expert may have a hard time finding. Why? Because they don’t use Yahoo!, Google or MSN very much.
Want one of my kids to find something online? Most often, their first stop is YouTube. That’s right. Need info on a person? Forget Yahoo!’s people search, there’s Facebook.
And these kids aren’t really any different than most other teens. Comscore’s May numbers show that YouTube searches are up 4 percent, while Google’s searches dropped 2 percent. Yahoo is down 4 percent, and Microsoft’s sites are down as well.
What’s up? Well, YouTube as I said, as well as Facebook and Craigslist.
Still Growing, Already Dividing
SEO (that is, Search Engine Optimization) is still a pretty new industry. There’s not a week that goes by that I have to explain what it is I do and (very generically) how I do it. People (usually clueless business owners) are fascinated that there exists an entire world based around increasing website traffic and climbing the rankings of Google and such. They had no idea the system could be gamed. (Yeah, I know, gamed isn’t really the right word to use here, but hopefully it gets the right idea across).
But now that there’s an increasingly younger audience to our SEO efforts, we’re starting to see more and more blog posts on things like Optimizing your Twitter profile, or How to turn your Facebook fans into sales leads.
Wait a minute: I thought my job was to optimize your website for certain terms, build links and make the user experience so that it increases conversions (ie ROI).
Now there are Social Media consultants (or “experts”). They help you build up your Facebook profile, tweet for you, and help you create community around your brand. It’s a terrific idea, and one that ultimately supports a business owner’s SEO efforts, but my gosh it’s time consuming. No wonder these people are creating their own industry.
And this isn’t really the first time SEO has divided. We’ve seem people go the way of Linkbait expert in the past, along with many other spin-offs.
Get to the Point, Will
Which brings me to the point of this rant: Choose your battles. Gee, you haven’t heard that one before. But really, how much money can the average small business owner throw at an SEO project? And then on top of that, social media, PPC, viral campaigns, linkbait and video? Forget it.
I’ll be honest with you. There is no one person that can do all of that effectively. No way, no how. It takes a team. Sure, that team may be all quarantined inside a single office, each doing their own little piece of the work, but there’s no way one person can promise a small business owner all of these things his/herself.
If your “marketing guy” tells you that he can do your email blasts, create videos, handle your SEO and run your PPC campaign, you’d better find out if he’s got a team behind him.
No related posts.
Searching Facebook and YouTube first probably works well, provided that you aren’t looking for anyone over 30. LOL.
Great blog. It seems to me anyone of those jobs you listed, could be a full time job by itself. Maybe in a future article you could talk about the best way to utilize a couple of those marketing avenues and how to best determine which one works for your business.
FREE labor works well. My favorite one is having to explain bluntly the meaning of SEO, purpose of it, and how it creates value for the business owner. Typically most don’t get it and probably won’t although it’s up to us internet marketers to break it down in Layman’s Terms…sometimes even spelling it out for them.
I wouldn’t say that it remains a “new industry” although I will say that it’s “new” to those that just discovered how the internet can help their business.
Nice post! Don’t overwork your kids, they’ll hate you later for it