Peter Hershberg had a great post in his AdAge blog on the evolution .. and the future … of search and social networking. Sample quote: “If 1.0 was about making sure the information within individual pages of your site could be found, and 2.0 was about making sure your site was optimized within a network of related sites, then 3.0 is going to be about finding ways to reach individuals by using their social graphs. That means reaching people where they’re already sharing, linking, publishing and tagging, and becoming another node on their social networks by interacting with them and adding value to their experiences online.”
Peter goes on to define three classes of contacts: Direct Connections (people who are connected based on the relationships they’ve built in the real world) … Interest Generators (people who don’t know each other personally, but share an interest or perspective) … Experience Sharers (. other people who have done or bought something you’re interested in but who you have no other connection to). Read his entire post here: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135566
Social networking (too often, it seems) becomes a race to see how many contacts and connections can be established … also often without regard to whether they are meaningful connections or not (Guy Kawasaki calls volume seekers sm’ores, which stands for social media …. ).
Big numbers are always impressive, but it’s still about target marketing, first and foremost. Is it better to have 100 Twitter follows who really care about you and your product, are likely to buy it, use it and recommend it to others (and so on and so on) … or 10,000 random followers who were … and are … twollowing a key word, not you? You know the answer to that one …. Lori Martinek, www.motivationalenergy.com.
