photo by RobertFrancis

In today’s consumer run world, we really have no idea how someone is going to first interact with our products, services or brand. They can come across your business through

• Google (or other search engine) keyword search
• Facebook status updates from your friends
• Tweets
• The news
• A newspaper
• Radio
• TV
• Direct Mail
• In a bar, or church or a ball park via word of mouth
• Magazines
• Blogs
• Clubs or associations
• Review sites
• Lots of other places

Of all of these touch points, there are very few that you have control on. And even the ones you have control over are experiencing declines in readership and circulation. So how do you get some control back? How do you maximize your touch points both online and offline?

The first is through reputation management. Cody wrote about a strategy to listen to the conversations happening around your brand. This has to be number one. You need to know what people think of you, your industry, your competition and other factors that concern your customers or audience.

The next thing to see is where your audience hangs out online. We all know that Google controls a large amount of search traffic. But did you also know that Facebook is the 2nd most popular site in the U.S. overtaking the entire Yahoo portal? Did you also know that YouTube is the number 2 search engine? Ahead of sites like Yahoo and Bing?

But even with all these huge numbers that social media throws out you really need to understand your audience . Are they hanging out on Facebook? Have they joined groups, are they fans of certain pages? What are they talking about?

Once you answer these big picture questions you can begin to marry your search efforts and your social meida marketing.

Last week, I shared with you seach results that were becomming more and more social – with live feeds, images, news, blogs, video and even your social graph coming to play on Google’s search results pages. This week Google announced that they were even going to start using Myspace blogs, updates and statuses in their live feeds (making the site more relevant?).

What this means is your need to create fresh content that your customers and fans WANT to see, is what Google is using to supply its search results.

Let’s get this straight? Working hard and being cool to your audience will reap rewards with new traffic?

Yup. That’s pretty much it. Google rewards those that make their searchers happy and fresh interactive content is right at the top of their minds. Your goal as a small business is to continue to be cool to your customers and showcase that coolness on the web. This can be in the form of videos, blog posts, images, job postings, podcasts, Tweets and more.

This week I was speaking to a property management association and they were really scared that social media was hard to do. While I agree it’s not as easy as doing nothing, here were some takeaways I gave them:

• Can you help your tenants cook and eat on a budget?
• Can you share with them information on how to clean certain features in their house with quick videos that can view on their iPhone while cleaning?
• Can you share children activities that are tailored to the layouts in your buildings?
• Can you share local sales or specials? ($5 pizzas anyone?)

These posts, videos and actions are really simple. They are the things we talk about everyday and now we are just sharing them with our community. And by doing this we are not only making our customers and clients happy, but These posts, videos and actions are really simple. They are the things we talk about everyday and now we are just sharing them with our community. And by doing this we are not only making our customers and clients happy, but Google as well and that’s the sign of a successful online marriage.

Tags: Search, seo, Social Media