Things are still developing in the social media, and the search engine optimisation industry waits at the side of internet marketers to see what will happen. Last year was a very interesting year for user patterns and social media networks, but on the whole there is a feeling of anticipation for 2010. The commentators are sitting and waiting, but it remains to be seen exactly what will happen.

Part of this comes from the slow snowball effect that the social media has. Big things seemed on the cards for social media optimisation in 2009, but the things that happened were relatively small. Businesses began to get some success with their Twitter and Facebook campaigns, but for businesses that only started their campaigns mid-2009 the results were nothing like the viral sensations that early predictions had led the industry to expect. Businesses that started their campaigns earlier, at the start of the trend on each site, enjoyed much greater success, jumping on to bigger and bigger things. What this shows is that exploiting the opportunities presented by the social media takes time and patience.

The recommended plan of attack

There are no absolutes with social media optimisation, and certainly no average path that every site should take. There are too many variables involved to describe the optimal plan, no matter how hard some experts have tried. Not only do you need to consider which social media sites hold interest for your target users, you need to take your business personality, resources, scheduling availability and SEO plan into account.

What you do need to consider is exactly what you want from social media optimisation. Do you simply want to augment your SEO plan? Do you want to reach a target user group that is proving difficult to locate in the search engines? Do you want to engage in a deeper relationship with your site’s users? Or do you perhaps want to build your reputation within your industry? Every goal can provide you with a workable plan, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult about matching strategies to goals. The trends in the industry will also provide you with some direction.

Where to look for trends in 2010

Strangely enough for internet phenomena, the place to track the changes in the social media seems to be the real media. While the internet seems like a world of its own, it’s important to remember that internet users are all real-world people with real-world influences. One of the interesting things about 2009 was how influential traditional media sources were in driving user groups to various social media sites, and it’s entirely possible that this evolving trend will continue in a similar direction.

This means that a site that wants to be in the know needs to watch more than one area. Just as you need to scan the business pages as well as blogs and business sites to keep ahead of the game, scanning the daily newspaper will be an important research task. The good news is, a morning coffee and paper reading session can justifiably be seen as ‘work’ time.

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