Here is an interesting thought. When searching for information on the internet most of us turn to Google right? But what happens when you can't find what you are after or find it hard to distinguish between the results?

Interestingly enough this happened to me the other day when searching for potential accommodation for an overseas holiday. Google did a fine job, as I expected, of returning a solid list of hotels and apartments and I had no issue with the actual search results, but how could I quickly determine (without trawling through hundreds of hotel websites and reviews) what are the recommended places, the places to avoid or the places that have in the last week been demolished? For this answer I turned to Facebook.

Quickly typing in the name of the town to the Facebook search returned a Facebook user group, opening this provided me with discussions, photos, reviews and funnily enough links to hotels and apartments being discussed, one of which I was able to make a booking. Done.

For me there is always an underlying thought with search engine results that ultimately a computer with an algorithm or an SEO expert could potentially be deciding my next holiday stay or what to do this weekend. Maybe it's just me, but social media searches seem to take away this doubt by providing a reassuring feeling that actual people in real time are asking and answering my questions. This Mashable.com article (http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/google-facebook-search) outlines the battle going on for our search and the potential Facebook has to overtake Google.

It may be a false hope and potentially the new Google Caffeine Algorithm may change this, but if I were looking for a new way to reach customers through my website without tweaking keywords and meta data, I would look for ways to engage or promote discussion within the "social sphere".

Social media still has it's flaw, don't get me wrong, the potential time it can waste is one of them. But if used wisely and tailored to suit your business culture it can be a powerful website promotion tool. 

I'll let you know the theory is correct... if my hotel turns out.

CR

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Posted in: Tips and Tricks