Technology’s Effect On Interpersonal Relationships

Modern technology may prove distracting on occasion, but at SXSW, a panel agreed that it can help people maintain and build interpersonal connections. One panelist was good enough to talk to WebProNews and explain her ideas on the subject, too.

Jenn Deering Davis, Cofounder of Appozite and CheapTweet Community Manager, observed in an interview with Abby Johnson, “There are all these new tools that can augment our existing relationships.”

In fact, she later added, “I think the biggest thing is to just keep in touch with people and to use all of these tools that we have,” whether your tool of choice is the telephone or something more newfangled like Twitter or Facebook.

The popularity of technology can lead to a difficult sort of balancing act, though. People can spend the majority of their day staring at their cell phones rather than talking to others, and Jenn said, “I think we’re all still figuring out how to manage that and how to best do both, because our face-to-face relationships are important and we want to be here, but we also need to be keeping track of things.”

She then concluded, “We need both. We need the in-person, the face-to-face, and we need the online.”

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The Death (Or Redefinition) Of SEO Discussed

Some people would have you believe that search engine optimization is a dying art, and depending on how you define SEO, that may be true. But at OMS 2010 in San Diego, Greg Jarboe, the president and cofounder of SEO-PR, explained that other definitions of SEO make it very much alive.

Here’s the thing: as Jarboe admitted, “The era of ten blue links is dead.” People also can’t expect to optimize a page by just changing keyword metatags anymore. Indeed, much of what so many SEO experts learned ten years ago has become irrelevant.

The trick is that expanded search, which can be defined as “search wherever it happens,” is now important. Facebook, eBay, and YouTube users all perform searches, after all, and their attention is valuable. So Jarboe concluded, “If you focus on those kinds of fundamentals, then SEO is alive and kicking.”

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Incorporating Social into Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing but is still very effective. Social media marketing is a relatively new form of marketing but is also very effective. What happens if the two are combined? According to Kara Trivunovic of StrongMail, email and social media provide many great advantages when they are put together.

When people integrate social into their email marketing programs, they have the opportunity to not only expand the reach of their existing offers, but also to encourage existing customers to evangelize on their behalf. As a result, companies could grow their database through acquisition, which is not usually common in email marketing.

As Trivunovic points out, there are three primary ways that people use to implement social into their email marketing efforts. They are:

1.    Sharing with your network
2.    Leveraging as a medium to incentivize current customer base
3.    Business model: acquiring customers through referrals

Trivunovic told WebProNews that approximately 86 percent of email subscribers share their email via email when they are asked to evangelize on the behalf of a company. Other social sharing methods include Facebook, Twitter, and blogging.

Incidentally, of that 86 percent that share via email, 19 percent of the receivers convert. That said, it seems safe to say that social media and email marketing work pretty well together.

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How Search and Social Affect PR

Most marketers utilize search engine optimization in order to make it easier for customers to find them and, ultimately, buy their products. As search, social media, and public relations become more intertwined, marketers need to understand that journalists are essentially customers as well.

Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, spoke with WebProNews at OMS and explained this idea. It is no secret that all companies want media coverage since it produces credibility, sales, search visibility, and more. So, what can marketers do to get noticed by journalists?

Based on survey conducted by TopRank, 91 percent of reporters, journalists, and editors used Google to help them find contacts in 2008. Of those surveyed, only 27 percent used social media. However, George Washington University and Cision released a report this year showing that 86 percent of the media use blogs and 64 percent use social media.

What does this tell marketers? According to Odden, marketers need to optimize their content in regards to what journalists are looking for. In other words, he suggests including terms such as “expert” and other credentials, specifications, and trends that journalists would use.

Incidentally, the survey found that TV and online journalists were more apt to use social media to find information.

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Using Location as a Query

According to Lawrence Coburn, the President of RateItAll, this is an exciting time for search marketers due to new opportunities in search queries. Historically, people would go to a search engine and enter a query. Now however, with a mere tap of a button on a phone, people can send out their location and it acts as a query.

Coburn comes from a user-generated content background and knows that it is not easy to get people to post content. But with check-in applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla, a single tap on a phone creates the content.

These applications tell your friends where you are while also letting Foursquare and Gowalla what places are popular. In addition, this data provides valuable opportunities for advertisers to get involved with location.

What does all this mean for search marketers? Location is important to them because they can build upon the APIs that Foursquare, Gowalla, and other similar applications have. Coburn’s company is even developing a product called DoubleDutch that will allow users to build their own Foursquare and Gowalla if they have a community tied to a specific location.

Because this idea of location as a query is relatively new, there are and will be challenges for search marketers. To help avoid them, Coburn advises marketers to create content around latitude and longitude. If they do this, then when people reveal their location, the marketers will know what to deliver.

How do you feel about using location as a query?

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