Our Insatiable Appetite
The choices can overwhelm you, the so-called experts can hound you and the decision remains how to improve the organization. And unless your company is called “campaign”, you need a strategy and long term solutions.
It’s not difficult to find someone who will lay claim to their vast knowledge of all things digital through blog webinars, Facebook symposiums and how-to LinkedIn seminars. Yet with a click of your mouse, you will be falling over self-proclaimed experts who can give you link bait and search juice for a handsome fee.
Under The Hood
Perhaps the not so sexy but valuable aspect of the social web that few talk about is research. Over and above any activity you partake through the myriad digital spaces, you can unearth rich useful information about your company, what people are saying about you, topics that are important to you and what your competitors are doing through regular digital audits.
With over 600 million daily search inquires on Twitter, someone seems to be digging around for information. And over a third of us online have presence on Facebook where we share more than 30 billion pieces of content every month.
And There's More
YouTube is the second largest search engine, next to parent company Google and fifth most visited website on the planet. It served more than 75 billion video streams to over 375 million unique visitors last year. And if you're looking for even more research, you can check out SlideShare which features hundreds of presentations in your industry. And there are hundreds of other spaces available.
The data are only worth something if you do something with it. The information needs to be gathered, analyzed and implemented. And constant research on the web can positively effect the bottom line. The decision is whether you want to do the work and put in the time.
Kneale Mann
image credit: cloudcentrics
original posted Feb 2011
