If you have already read J.Leigh Brown’s post about adapting your thinking regarding social media, but are still not convinced that you should include a social media strategy as part of your 2010 marketing initiatives, please consider the following:

Ten Reasons to develop a social media strategy in 2010

1. Real time search results – Google and other major search engines have incorporated Twitter into the results. You could potentially be bumped in the rankings by an outside party tweeting about your company or products.

2. Reduced marketing spend in 2009 – If budget cuts forced you to go dark in 2009, a social media strategy can help you reconnect with your customers and prospects.
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Last week Google announced that they will be including tweets in their search results, and will be building a real-time search that includes Twitter and other providers.

What does that mean to a B2B company looking to optimize their web site for search? While the details of how tweets will be incorporated into Google results are yet to be determined, it is becoming clear that B2B marketers cannot dismiss social networking mediums like Twitter.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released survey results reporting that 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others.

The Google announcement is yet another reason to consider
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A recent article in emarketer cites a study of senior-level search engine marketing executives who are not satisfied with how SEM is working for them. How about you?

As you plan for 2010, you should consider techniques and tactics that will help you get more and better B2B search results - organic, paid or both. You probably think I'm going to talk about landing pages, page URLs, meta descriptions, inbound links and other arcane tips. Nope. I will leave that to my colleagues, or at least to another time.

Today I want to urge you to use the "secret weapon" that will increase your search engine marketing results. It's called integrated marketing communications. Yes, boring, traditional marcom. Except that there is nothing traditional about web-centric, digital marketing communications the way we practice it.
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Summer has officially started, and while some companies have been taking a “vacation” from their marketing budgets due to the economy, the recovery is in sight according to a recent survey by BtoB Magazine.

If you have not been proactive in promoting your web site, and making sure it is optimized for search engines, now is the time, so that when your customers and prospects budgets open up, they can easily find you. Search Engine Optimization is not an overnight fix; when significant changes are made, it can take several months for the top search engines to effectively crawl and index your site. Nor is SEO a once and done project; it should be an ongoing priority as part of your marketing budget.

Here are some key questions to ask if your site is search engine optimized:
•    Can you find the site easily? Not
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What Search Can – and Can’t – Do

Our friends at Enquiro recently published an article making some cogent points about search. 

On the one hand, it’s exciting to see search, including SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) flourishing as a marketing option. On the other, it’s alarming to see so many people jumping into an admittedly-sturdy lifeboat in a raging sea.

Rather than seeing search as a marketing channel, Enquiro suggests, we should view it as a connector, connecting interested prospects and customers with your place in cyberspace.

A similar article in Ad Age compares search to trade or in-store promotion.
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It’s always been an article of faith here at Godfrey that B-to-B search is fundamentally different than the “normal” or B-to-C variety. Almost every day I find yet another illustration of just how different things are.

I recently read an article published by search consultant Enquiro, entitled “B2B Keyword Research When You’re in a Niche Market/Industry.” It was filled with the research-laden information Enquiro dependably provides in its many publications about search.

One comment stuck out at me, however: under issue No. 2, describing things to avoid, the company wrote, “Using industry jargon that people may not be aware of. Marketers are the worst for this are they not? We continue to see this all of the time.
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