What has brought this to light recently for me is the Analytics market and specifically the Google accreditation of Google Authorised Analytics Consultant (GAAC).  in the past few month or so I must have seen press releases from or spoken 4 or 5 UK search marketing agencies who had just been accredited the qualification.  All of them claiming to be “one of the only agencies in Europe” or “one of a select few agencies” to have achieved the award, most of them also claiming to have a dedicated team of analytics experts.  It doesn’t take a genius to work out that with each one of these press releases this “select group” becomes less select and the claim of being part of it become less and less of a USP.

What becomes important now is how you gain cut through, once being there, an being part of an “elite group” is not enough.  This is where the real marketing theory come in of aligning your product, price and promotion to the needs of your customers whilst also hopefully trying to evolve to make sure you are offering something your customers are not, or can not offer.

In the search marketing industry Google Analytics and analytics consultancy runs the risk of never realising its potential for agencies because they struggle to build it into a scalable product or service.  After all, the end product itself is free, so you have to make sure you have some value to add which you can charge for in a profitable way.  It is the responsibility of the agencies to ensure that the GAAC doesn’t just become one of a list of accreditations that they have because they feel they should (much the way Google Adwords Professional has gone) and that they use it to support a product which brings value to their customers and their own business.

What I began wondering the other day around this subject is in this scenario, where you have an industry still in rapid evolution, is it best to shout the loudest, and be a self proclaimed (and sometimes merited) “expert”.  Or keep quiet, and go about your daily work, safe in the kowledge you are at the leading edge of what you do, without feeling the need to go shouting it from the rooftops.

I could easily name a half dozen people who are well known in UK SEO community whose knowledge is shaky at best when interrogated.  Yet these people command reaonsably senior positions and probably earn good salaries, mostly off the back of a persception that they know a lot due to their prominence in the industry.  Then there is probably somebody practicing SEO on an in house site, or with a smaller agency, who knows a great deal and could wipe the floor with these people, but he/she doesnt go to the meetups, engage in the SEO community etc and ends up losing out because of it.

So is it best to shout and run the risk of being found out? Or keep quiet safe in the knowledge you know what you need to know.

Speed, accessibility and usability have all been issues in adoption to date. The rise of the iPhone, Blackberry, and now the Nexus one have already, and will continue to, speed up the growth of mobile Internet usage.

With more usage also comes a perceived need. Do you really need to check Facebook or Twitter 10 times a day? No, but you do because it only requires you to touch the icon on your phone.

Further advancements in accessibility through applications and bespoke service solutions will further drive growth.

I think mobile web is definitely “the future” it’s just how far in the future we are talking.

For now, I am going to stop typing and won’t be posting again from my phone for a while as my eyes ate hurting from squinting and my thumbs are aching from typing on this tiny keyboard!

Any typos are courtesy of my iPhone!

But what about in the real world?  Should companies be able to enforce their employees off social networking sites?  And more importantly is it in their interest to do so?  I would argue that this level of control is likely to produce rebellion rather than compliance.  Perhaps not for the multimillionaire footballers who have so much to lose, but from the normal employee.  After all, it wouldn’t take much for them to set up a fake profile in a different name and start tweeting even more negative stories as a result of the ban.

I think it is in a company’s interest to let employees have their freedom of speech, and only addressing should there be isolated instances of abuse or misuse.  By all means put a fair usage policy in place to give them some guidelines to work to and make sure you monitor what is being said, but putting complete bans in place is only going to produce more problems than it solves.

Similar debates range about extra curricular activities such as moonlighting, but I’ll leave the final word on that to Judith Lewis – If Your SEO Is Not Moonlighting, Fire Them

People are now becoming comfortable with the use of social media as a means to broadcast our thoughts, communicate with our friends and family and engage with the online world.  But some people maybe have become too comfortable, and have lost the ability to think before they broadcast to the world.  More and more people seem to think that publishing status’ on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or any other channel, containing information about their relationships or working life, is an acceptable part of modern day life.  But what I think people need to consider is whether this is information that they, or anyone else it relates to, want in the public domain either for personal or professional reasons.  You may think that you are only connected to your friends on Facebook so it is OK, but some of those friends may also be colleagues so slagging off your boss, or bragging about a new job, isn’t very professional when that is considered.  Similarly sharing intimate details about a relationship (either good or bad!) might be deemed OK when you are talking to close friends, but would this be information you would give to some of your less well known contacts, colleagues, bosses etc? Probably not.

Social media is great for sharing information, and our daily activities with others.  But I would urge you to think before you type when it comes to social networks and channels, as the information you are writing enters the public domain the minute you press the enter key.

• Microsoft launched bing without too much of a bang
• Google gets a caffeine boost
• People waved at each other (and then stopped)
• People continued to talk about social media usage
• Companies started to try and use twitter
• Facebook got monetised
• Google changed its homepage (a little)
• Display advertising became Google’s next target
• Search became real time and personal
• Display advertising tried to become targeted and monitored
• Google went universal
• Google still hasn’t made any money out of Youtube
• Microsoft and Yahoo finally joined forces
• People started to realise the importance of analytics

So much has happened I have undoubtedly missed something from this list so I will look to add to it in the coming days.  For now, I am off for another mince pie!  Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2010 to you all!

• Invest in content to get links
• Get the links and you get traffic (either through rankings or referrals)
• Get the trafficand you get the money (and profit, business model allowing!)
• Invest the money back into the content and the cycle continues!

Remove any part of the cycle, and it just doesnt work!

seo diagram" src="http://www.robweatherhead.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/seo-cycle.jpg" alt=" seo diagram" width="540" height="540" />

So what changes are in the pipeline?

• Slightly tweaked logo and search buttons on homepage
• Search filtering using headings in new left column
• Filter searches by time, bringing in a new real time search element
• More obvious related search queries
• Google trends integration to give timelines for search queries
• Larger map integration with main search column
• Google Shopping included alongside paid listings

What does this mean for search marketing?

• Real time search and news sources increase in important due to the time filtering function
• Each channel becomes even more important and I expect search volumes to increase across news, image video etc
• Search marketers are going to have to utilise every channel available to gain coverage
• Search to click on individual keywords will drop as users utilise the new navigation
• The importance of big keywords (e.g. car insurance) will drop significantly and maybe so will their cost on PPC /li>

Exciting times ahead folks!

Whilst I agree, the measurability of online marketing, social media included, means you should be tracking all online revenues back to source, and analysing profitability, I think a large proportion of social media elements fall outside of the ROI driven channels.  Social media by its very nature is about communication, collaboration, and engagement and this should be the starting point of any social media strategy.  Profit and revenues may follow, but too much focus on ROI will make social media look poor in comparison to other true “advertising” media and will have people missing the point.

A lot of social media activity comes under the banner of customer engagement, networking or customer services.  Engaging people on twitter and Facebook, communicating to customers via a corporate blog, creating business connections through social networks.  Most of these things will not have a directly attributable ROI but that doesn’t mean they are not of value.  After all, does you local supermarket place an ROI on the greeter they have instore, or the customer help desk? No, they are there to try and ensure people a pleasant “user” experience and many online social channels should be used in the same way.

Use social media to engage, understand, and build relationships, if you achieve this then the profits come naturally.