Impressions - February 2015 - 38

The Long Tail refers to the relationship of how much search volume there is for
any given keyword or keyword phrase. The
more generic the term, the higher the volume. The more speciﬁc the term, the lower
the search volume.

THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
While all this was happening, something else was occurring in the background.
Facebook and Twitter took off like crazy in
2008. People were talking and the world
was listening.
But the business world didn't understand social media at all. They thought is
was a bunch of high school and college
kids posting pictures of their drinking parties and their cats, dooming it as a colossal
waste of time and completely unproductive. Not only that, but they feared the
disgruntled consumers who would post
negatively about their businesses and ruin
them. So many businesses stayed far away
from social media.
There may have been some truth to it,
but let's face it - most of those negative
posts were actually deserved. When horrible customer service was pretty much
the rule of the day, the consumer had no
way to retaliate or ﬁght back.
Social media changed all of that. By the
time Facebook and Twitter took off, consumers could tell the world about their
experiences - the good, the bad and the
ugly. They could really punish a business
for horrible customer service, poor performance or a shoddy product. Suddenly,
we started to see the rise of sites like Yelp,
Angie's List,Google Local,Merchant Circle,
Hot Frog, Manta, YP, Amazon Reviews and
many more.

Consumers were rating, tweeting and
telling the world about what businesses
were selling and what the experience was
like. And people were listening. Just like
with Google, some people tried to "game
the system." You know, things like competitors posting negatively about their
competition. This led to more fear in the
marketplace from businesses. Thankfully,
this didn't last that long.
By 2013, things had settled down and
we had a relatively stable year in 2014 to
analyze, adapt and react. The course of action for a successful business in 2015 is becoming clear. You will need to understand
how consumers are now searching for and
ﬁnding you on the Internet.

SOCIAL, INTENT-DRIVEN SEARCH
Social media is here to stay. The reason

it's so popular is because it's a two-way
conversation and it's not about you controlling it. It's about the consumers talking
to each other and validating their ﬁndings.
There's no question that buying on the
Internet is bigger than ever and is about to
explode. If you don't do business on the
Internet today, you're at a serious disadvantage. Every local decorating business
has experienced a potential customer walk
through the door with art he created via
an online designer on an Internet competitor's website. The thing is, he wants the
work locally.
According to BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, 97% of consumers start their search
for local purchasing online. They search
for prices, styles, availability and so forth.
When the initial recon is done, they move
on to searching for reviews. Let's suppose

The Nielsen Online Global Consumer
Survey measures how much the average consumer trusts the source of online advertising.
The highest levels of trust come from personal
recommendations by your friends and peers. If
you do not have a connection to the audience,
the trust level is low.

Impressions | February 2015

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Impressions - February 2015

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