I saw this recently:

1. person builds their own community usingsocial media.
2. Person challenges or sets competition for individuals in the community to get the word out about the community. E.g., generate traffic to the community, SEO for Google first page etc.

It’s a win-win of combined efforts of more than one person (in this case hundreds of people) to boost SEO for the community therefore seo for the community increases and people benefit from sthe combined efforts of seo.

Just my 2 cents,
Ryan Price

I use alot of social media websites it is the esiest way.

Since about 1996 I’ve been watching, amazed, at the power of communities to subvert BS in the growth of the web.

It’s sad but not suprising the ways in which marketers (and I am one) have tried to co-opt the organic to serve commercial opportunities.

It’s equally suprising and positive how the “organic” nature of human interaction has subverted all their attempts.

Every new online development, from social networking to the better parts of what’s called “Web 2.0″ has been asserted by people, especially the technical community.

We the people persist in finding ways to interact and state our beliefs regardless of how marketers try to exploit these efforts for their own gain.

The secret to integrating all that is great about human community with business opportunity is, as you said, for marketing to have heart. This starts with really listening to what consumers want and not sticking fiercely to an internal product marketing agenda.

Social media will force marketers to get real. I myself welcome the process of transformation.

E

Try to add sturctured SEO (key words etc) and people can see right through that. People can sense when a comment is from the heart.

Jeff

I’m sure there are companies offering social media data analysis for product feedback. You can use many of the top tier social media monitoring tools for that kind of research too.

1. Social media push vs. pull

So, are most people looking at social media as a way to =gather= information vs. =push= marketing messages? I’m very interested in the former. It doesn’t benefit me directly, but I could see it working well for my clients. Is anybody offering this to clients — doing search/analysis of social media for product feedback?

2. Making blogs work

Meanwhile, I’ve been using my own foray into blogging in a different way. I don’t necessarily worry about SEO, because I don’t get many clients that way. I capture ideas that will a. be useful to my clients or b. relate to sales and relationship-building obstacles I face and then send the links to my prospects as conversation starters.

I work for a design/branding firm, so my use of all these tools is maybe a different perspective.

Thanks for the great ideas.

And, remember, think of your social media networks as communities instead of audiences!

kenroy

I completely agree that there is a latency in understanding by company marketers and some agencies of where/how consumers are discovering content online. Search is just a slice and the social web offers a substantial opportunity as well. Combining both is the one two punch.