I’ve had a few friends lately who aren’t sure about the value of social media marketing, so rather than debate the merits of social media verbally, I thought I’d save the time needed to argue it repeatedly, and do my best to compile my thoughts so I could merely direct others to this posting in the future. Below are what I believe to be the 7 benefits to engaging in social media. Keep in mind, different individuals will have different objectives, and therefore will look for different benefits. Here is a summary though:

Whether it’s watching someones misfortune, individual rants, old music videos, my favorite teams past sporting glories, lost TV episodes or political debates, I just can’t seem to get enough of YouTube. It’s become a personal entertainment option and, from an SEO standpoint, as videos are beginning to rank, I enjoy the challenge of defining my clients video content strategies.

This week I’m exploring YouTube, by the numbers:

* YouTube was created in mid February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, three former PayPal employees.

* The domain name “YouTube.com” was activated on February 15, 2005

It’s been forever since I’ve posted anything and it’s probably going to take me a while to come back up to speed, but in the meantime, I’ll start with the proverbial babysteps.

So, guess which magazine is making it’s long overdue comeback?

While it may be old news from CNET, I for one welcome the return of the Industry Standard.

Gosh, how I remember cutting my baby SEO teeth on the standard.

There was just some ineffable thing that made it completely accessible and crunched down to Internet time, making it the perfect in transit reading.

When the Toronto Star published an article several weeks back announcing that roughly 700,000 Facebook users belong to the Toronto city network, my phone rang off the hook from clients asking what their Facebook strategy will be.

SEP has been working with Social Media, at a variety of levels, for some time, so the announcement that General Motors Europe is launching a “social media newsroom” caught my attention.

Essentially, GM Europe’s new website will allow downloads of its photography from Flikr, a link to their video collection in YouTube and news to be “republished, commented on, shared and tagged by a large community where the boundaries between news provider and news consumer continue to blur,” it said in a statement.

The beauty of social networks is that they engage users and facilitate enjoyable forums to discuss a variety of topics.

One of the significant trends of social networks is that they are beginning to develop a distinct local flavour. Facebook
alone has over 1 million members from Toronto.

With this level of engagement it’s tough for traditional local print media to ignore, particularly the Yellow Pages, who have among the most complete local online business listings around. So when will Yellow Pages become social? According to Darby Seiben, Senior Manager - Traffic, Distribution and eProduct Management with YellowPages.ca, they already have.

I came across Tyler Reed’s blog who posted this great e-conomy presentation:

It underscores that consumers trust word-of-mouth more than any other form of advertising. In fact, 76 per cent of consumers don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising at all.

According to the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association, yes, there really is such an organization, over 90% of purchases made online were a direct result of some kind of word of mouth action and being a known brand website came in 2nd.

Despite the fact del.icio.us has been around for quite a while I really didnÂ’t fully understand its popularity. I saw del.icio.us as a facebook/myspace for bookmarks. This all changed when I started blogging.

IÂ’ve always been a news hound and pour through tons of articles from a variety of sources covering dozens of subjects. After taking a closer look, I quickly found out that del.icio.us makes it easy to store them all in one place and, if tagged properly, access them from any computer in an organized and timely fashion as I needed them.

“Content is King” and “It’s not about clicks, it’s about conversions!” Sound familiar? It’s part of the daily SEO professionals vocabulary. Would it surprise you if I said that the Yellow Pages industry has been using these terms for years?

It shouldn’t. In its quest for better measures of accountability, the original search engine has been turning to new metrics such as Engagement and ROI to prove its value, for some time. The three most significant indicators of Yellow Pages value – references, calls to advertisers and influence - % of buyers influenced by Yellow Pages ads - have produced outstanding data for YP Sales Professionals to discuss with their clients.

In what may well be a sign of things to come, it appears Google has removed 30% of organic listings on local market searches in some markets.

Note that in the above images, local maps appear, however, where there was once 10 organic listings there are now 7.

Do maps qualify as organic results?

Could Google increase the page to put the 10 listings back? That would mean they have to reassess the paid landscape on the side and that’s unlikely.

These results are not typical of Google.com, but are pervasive in alternate Googles.

There is an absolutely fascinating article on TheStreet.com (also interesting because the URL string tracks the source): eBay Snub Suggests Google’s Big Troubles.

It’s not so much interesting because it espouses everything I’ve said for the past couple months, not the least of which include the whole ebay thing and the fact that the loss or removel of paid advertising does not necessarily impact traffic IF (BIG IF) you have the organic results in place. (BTW ebay does, both in organic listings and in product listings.)