Social media optimisation was the big topic of the last year in the industry, and at the moment agencies are trying to build a business model around it. Most of them are going down the consultancy path plus offering specific services in the way of building widgets or Facebook applications to boost viral campaigns. Most of them are struggling to give value out of it and most companies marketing departments are still reticent to invest money on not so tangible services.
The erroneous way to approach Social Media services, advocated by some other agencies, it is the pay per profile, pay per automatic tools to be present in social networks or per tweets/Facebook friends/Linkedin contacts, etc. This approach is the equivalent of blog comment spam or automated link requests and goes against the intrinsic nature of social media which is based in engaging in the conversation.
In my opinion, the way to monetise the use of social media as an agency service for marketing departments is through education. You don’t give a fish to a hungry man you teach him how to fish. The marketeers are always going to know more about their target audience than any search agency, they know their products upside down and they can relate to their customer’s needs and enquiries promptly and accurately, unlike any third party agent.
Most of people are already engaged in social media whether the CEOs approve it or not. We all have Facebook profiles or twitter accounts or we use youtube and upload videos. It is the way it is and banning it would be useless. On the flip side, that means that every company has already the potential to leverage social media as a tool to generate leads, improve customer services and cut costs accordingly and apply insight gathered from their customer base to product development. They just have to capitalise on their workforce, find an agency/trainer who can educate them in the use of social media outlets for corporate purposes whilst keeping it fun and personal.
Additionally, a corporation is nothing but the sum of its employees and the sum of the personal reputations would enhance corporate reputation. It is a win-win situation.
At the International Search Summit next week, I will speak about the balance between personal and corporate reputation, how to capitalise on your social media savvy workforce and why social media gurus can just be snake oil salesman; a successful social media strategy will only be successful if stems from the corporate core and the company most valued assets, their people.
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Oscar Carreras: Spanish Linguistics graduate with a wide knowledge of new technologies resulting from an additional certificate in Advanced Computing. Varied Experience in web development, database management and graphic design, complemented by strong language ability and organisational skills developed in diverse work environments. Understanding of online marketing, SEO, PPC, SEM....