February 03, 2006
In one of my recent posts I discussed that an obsession with SEO as the things that will make or break your business is a great mistake.
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Barry Welford the President of SMM recently posted an article that deals with the temptation to wait around and wait for SEO to kick in.
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He prefaces it all with a reminder of what LongTail Space is:
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“The Long Tail view, you may remember, suggests that a given slice of the Internet is really made up of a very large number of micro-niches. Each micro-niche includes people who have similar interests but differ significantly from the people in the other micro-niches. The Internet is well-suited to cater to large numbers of micro-niches since creating variety is much easier than if you're making pots and pans.”
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While it is important to understand the value of niches, Barry goes on with the obvious question:
“How then do you get folk in these micro-niches to be aware that you have the product just for them? Well, search engines such as Google and Yahoo! do a pretty good job of finding very specific items if you're careful in how you phrase your searches.”
Of course, we are finding out that not only can this take a long time, but the competition for “keywords” is brutal and becoming more and more expensive. Then we have the problem of whether we’ll even end up on the first page of searches or among the top ten.
Barry, in my opinion gives the right solution: “it's not a bad idea to try to work the other media. It's a very powerful way of creating or reinforcing the buzz, of spreading the viral message. As the Internet becomes main stream, then the other media become parallel ways of creating the links.”
This is absolutely true. All forms of media from old to new are becoming increasingly integrated and cross-linked. The old media can definitely be a major thrust for you and a competitive advantage.
I would go one step further and say that not only include other media, but other types of marketing techniques and opportunities that also exist on the web. There are numerous ones.
The bottom line is that there will no longer be success for those who only rely on one form of marketing online anymore. There too many people who use a tremendous array of media and devices to be reached with only one type of marketing medium.
comments
I'm glad, Gary, that we're singing from the same hymn-sheet. Since we're never sure which medium will bring the best return, it's good not to put all your eggs in one basket. I also believe that seeing the same message in two media has a more powerful effect than you might expect from mere addition. I think there's a powerful synergy created. Thanks for referencing what I wrote.
Posted by: Barry Welford | February 4, 2006 09:59 PM | Permalink to Comment