Could Social Media Replace Search?
Now don’t get me wrong this will not happen overnight or even at all but you have to put into consideration as to how powerful social media is growing. Sites like Facebook and Twitter have been on a steady explosive growth since they launched and there are no signs of stopping. I personally think that social media marketing will just increasingly grow and morph as the new search, but for purpose of this article, here are some arguments as to how powerful social media marketing truly is and how it could over run search as we know it.
No Manipulation: Social media cannot be manipulated like search results can. You either communicate or you don’t.
Less Spam: Search results have a tremendous amount of spam that you usually have to open before you find out it is. Social media spam is at a much lesser amount, for now anyway!
Big Brands Using It: Every major big brand has adopted social media as a part of their marketing plan which is only going to grow stronger over time.
Nose End: Even though search is still very young social media is even younger. With the power that social media has built up since its initial rise who knows it might surpass search marketing over time.
More Options: With social media you have many different options on how to reach out to someone and communicate. Search only gives you two, organic and PPC.
Real Time: Social media is happening now. No publishing an article and waiting 2 months for someone to find it. Social media gives you instant interaction with your audience.
Human Factor: You know that with social media you have the ability to communicate with a human immediately. With search you communicate with a link and to some people that human factor has its weight in gold.
Search Ability: Many of the social network platforms are starting to have the ability to really be able to search right on their platform for a variety of different reasons. Some even pulling in direct search results right through their social networking platform.
Less Expensive (In some cases): When you start to compare certain pay per click costs to market a website in the search space it can get really expensive. With social media all you really need is time spent communicating online.
Brand Building: The social media space really allows you to build your brand online by showing your audience you have a personality and knowledge not just a web page of content.
Whether this actually happens is another story. Social media marketing is clearly making its place in the web marketing world and it is going to have an even much larger impact on the way businesses market themselves online. What do you think? Do you think social media marketing will eventually replace search engine marketing or will it be the new search?
16 Responses to “Could Social Media Replace Search?”
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I love the list of why and why not reasons, so for that thank you. However, I personally believe that until the search ability function is added more search engines will continue to be the main search option. As soon as Facebook or Twitter get a link to an actual search engine then the game will change. As of now once an article gets pushed off of someone’s feed it’s usually lost some of its appeal and value. Thanks again for the article I really enjoyed it!
I don’t think so.
First of all when people want to search for something, the first thing that comes to their mind is “Let me Google it”.
For example if i want to find a well written article for “CSS sprites” google will bring up good stuff (the first result is css-tricks.com which is an excellent site with great resources, so google presented the best result for me).
If i do the same thing using Twitter’s search, there are dozen of tweets from random people and i have to go through all the links to find out more information. Also those are recent tweets and no one can guarantee that they are linking to an article that is related to the search term i entered or that the article is worthy enough.
Sharing links via fb/twitter/etc is nice and google bot for example crawls instantly every new link that is posted in Twitter and then your article/post is searchable.
The problem is that with more and more people sharing links, the more difficult it becomes for users to find information that is interesting and valuable for them.
The same problem occurs with SEO, people may have used various techniques to boost their articles/posts in search results but the article/post itself can be very poor or uninformative.
Overall Social Media are awesome for sharing instantly your messages/thoughts/articles/etc but they can only provide you “glory” for a small timeframe. In the long run google search will be the vault of information and make your articles/posts/etc accessible throughout the time. Last by not least direct traffic shows if your content is worthy.
By the way i found your article via a retweet i saw in my timeline. The big question now is will i visit your site next time directly (bookmark) or via a retweet again?
Thanks Josh for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Hi Alex,
You bring up some excellent points! Hopefully next time you visit my site it will direct (I guess retweet is okay too!)
Thanks for the comment & Take Care!
Nick
Hi Nick,
Interesting article and maybe Google needs to get ready to partner with Facebook
If this were to happen, like you said, it wouldn’t be overnight. The possibilities are there but I don’t see Google going away that quickly unless they find a way to socialize. Google is a household name and a company with elbowing room that can influence the Internet.
Also, right now most social sites are “In the moment” type of sites. They are not for spending a great amount of time for searching the best price for a tv.
Searching isn’t the flavor of the moment and it isn’t upbeat like tweeting or sharing on LinkedIn or Facebook. Search and social media are too different for search engines to just go away and be replaced by social sites.
Top 10 apple iStore apps have millions of downloads. Anybody ever see an ad for 1? in print? online? anywhere?
The new marketing is viral. B2C marketing, and soon to follow B2B marketing, will no longer buy ad space in magazines, online, or on television. New marketing will be 100% about creating and feeding viral campaigns. This will be much more difficult. Now, not only do I need to know my demographic, but I need to know how they communicate to others and influence that by making it simple (rewteet, like, etc..). At google today, a majority of its revenue is coming from the traditional “your ad here” sales. In the future, facebook. twitter, and others like it will rule. This will be the downfall of google unless it can be #1 or #2 in that social media market.
Hi Carlos and David, Great points! Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts! It will be very interesting to see how things progress with social media and search in the coming years…
Take care,
Nick
Hey Nick,
Great question and you bring out some important things to consider. Recently I read an article about Google Social Search and how it could be the direction Google is headed (that and mobile) though, as you mentioned, it will be a looooong time yet until the classic search engine as it is will disappear or be replaced altogether, there will be change and advancement in the search engine niche toward using social connections to improve or personalize search results.
I read about this and how to set up your google buzz profile to help your promotion in social search Google results from a friend and the topic is somewhat similar.
Anyway you cut it, however, social marketing should not be ignored.
Hi Jen,
Excellent points! No matter how you cut it social media marketing should NEVER be ignored!
Thanks for the comment & Take Care,
Nick
Great topic! Thanks for posting this. I work with an online store and have tried Facebook and Twitter social marketing and have not seen any results at all. So, I am wondering what gives? Maybe we just did it wrong, or did not invest the proper time in it, but who is on facebook or twitter looking to buy products? We are retail so maybe I am out of the loop here. Is it better for service oriented business?
If there is any meat to this trend it missed my fork.
These large companies must see something in terms of ROI, or they just see a big potential market there (500,000,000 people on fb) or they are simply following the herd (not hard to believe). I just think it’s hard to believe that people actually buy stuff because it was on facebook. Some people do buy some things just based on what friends say. But how do you control what people post about your product? Opinions are also still based on what people in the know say i.e. tech mags (online) for electronics and car mags for cars etc.
When Target gets on facebook they do appear “hip” in today’s terms and it’s also good PR. It might also help their search rankings if they gain links and likes. But in the end being ranked #1 for a hgh traffic term is the goal, and its always going to be so much more lucrative. It captures people at the point when they are looking to buy and ready to buy, facebook and twitter capture people when they are interested in talking to friends and meeting people.
That being said, getting your store to rank for a big term is no easy task, even with a huge budget. So, social networking is the next best thing.
As far as people supplanting social realm for search I kind of doubt that will happen as search is so direct and many purchases are impulse buys based on decisions gleened from prices found on search engines, shopping comparison engines and related.
If one of my friends recommends something on Facebook I might try it out. If I come across a comment about something on Facebook I might discover a new store but who really talks about products and so on on Facebook?
It must account for a very small percentage of sales if any.
Social marketing lends itself more to businesses like Amway. Referral business. Maybe it replaces the person-person, door to door selling we once had but I can’t see how it replaces search anytime soon.
Nick, it’s good you bring up this debate, because all I seem to hear on webinars or product writings is in a way that paints this all one way or the other. Sure, Facebook, Twitter etc. will have continued impact, and in some cases social will cause sales to happen when the authenticity is there.
Having said that, people go to social sites to be social. (how profound!) They don’t go there primarily to look up some service, product or subject they are interested in. Also, search pages and websites show up with more authority and in an organized fashion, whereas social is piece-meal. Search will persist and though there is some overlap, it’s distinction will not be lost.
Hi Jack and Tim,
Thanks so much for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Take Care!
Nick
It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Just because FB is knocking on the door (or already is) for the #1 site in the world, it doesn’t mean that social will replace search.
I would never use Social Networking to find a list of the #1 club hits where I wouldn’t think twice about using Google (I just did it 5 minutes ago.)
Because FB and Google “fight” for the world’s most popular and used website doesn’t mean their essence will replace one another.
Thanks Reid for the comment and for being a loyal reader!
Great points here, it does seem that Google and Facebook are in the middle of a silent territory fight…
Take Care!
Nick
Hi Nick,
Your blog post inspired me to write a pretty long article about this subject, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to write about ever since reading the title of your post. I comment on your 10 points, but mostly talk about taking a step back to look at what “social media” really is and how to use it for marketing.
If you care to read:
http://findalbany.com/blog/uncategorized/social-media-marketing-and-other-things-that-arent-new/
Btw, I subscribe to your newsletter and I think you guys do a pretty good job of baiting readers over to your site or at least into reading the full mini-paragraph in the email. There’s always something interesting there.
Thanks Chase for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Thanks Nick!