SOS Marketing, LLC.

I hate it when I get emails or see programs trying to sell something to businesses, especially the Internet Market crowd and they misinterpret the data. There are so many people out there trying to capitalize on the fact that Facebook get as much traffic as they do. Of course Facebook has a tremendous amount of traffic.

Do not delude yourself into thinking that Google will be replaced by Facebook.

Before you begin to take stock in all the hype about how Google is dying or dead and you must position yourself, so you will not see the death of Google… ask yourself a few questions:

How is that traffic counted, that you see in the stats they show?

How many of those people are actually searching for your business or the products and services that you offer?

How many of them are searching for anything other than their friends and family and photos?

The truth is, most of them are not searching for a single thing. People do not go to Facebook to find an eBook or to look for an iPod or to read reviews on the latest droid gadget. The fact is people go there to socialize and communicate with their friends and family. They go to share personal information. Then a certain percentage go to Facebook to play games, while a few people (as in a certain percentage) use it for business. Then there are those that refuse to click on any ads, because it is not a search tool.

Anyone who tells you Google or Bing or the principles behind a Search using a Search Engine is dead, really has no idea how those search engines really work. They have no idea how people who do the searches use them either. Mostly throughout this article, I am going to refer to Google more than other search Engines.

A couple of reasons why are Yahoo has yet to do anything new in the market and if I remember correctly, just before MSN Search became Bing, Yahoo was using the MSN search engine to run it’s own algorithms.

Although Bing, may be a player in the search engine game, they too are not the one that many marketers and advertisers talk about most when referring to search. They have been gaining more and more market share, which suggests that they will be a player for a long time to come. But my personal belief is they get a lot of their traffic via their other paid products.

The diehard Microsoft OS crowd and the new users that buy a PC for the first time and use the default settings, which are Internet Explorer and Bing Search. I believe that like Google and Bing will be around for quite a while as search engines.

Then there really are no other dominate search engines to compare.

So let’s look at a few other facts:

First, we must recognize that social media really is growing and no going anywhere. To that end, these marketers are not mistaken. Today, YouTube (a Google property) is the #4 search engine. Yes, that supports the claim that perhaps social media is taking over and Search Engines may have met their match. YouTube may be a social networking site, but as mentioned, it is also a Google Owned property, it uses Google search algorithms and the reason YouTube is not the #1, #2 or #3 Search Engine is, because it is not designed to only be a search engine. Not everyone searching on the Internet is looking for videos when they go online to find something. In fact, some people do not even watch TV, so why search for more videos online. Plus, there are plenty of people that barely have a handle on how to even use Google search or Bing as it is. How many people do you know, that really know how to properly use any search engine? How many people do you know that even understand how to use Boolean search terms or even what that means?

Second, Google loves video. Not only YouTube video, but other kinds of video too. This is one way that Google ranks and finds relevant material.

Third, Google gains a tremendous amount of traffic through the free tools they have available. This will continue to drive the relevance and usefulness of how consumers view Google.

Fourth, Google loves social media and even has one of it’s own, known as Google Buzz. But the true potential of this tool has yet to be completely known or understood by most users, as it has not yet been completely integrated into all of Googles other properties. There is also Google Friend Connect and integration with YouTube and the open source nature of Google’s API’s, as well as the integration with OpenID. So whatever you do, do not discount Google as a dominant player in the Social Media market just yet.

Fifth, Google is a debt free company, with a ton of extra money in the bank. How many social media companies can say that? Facebook has yet to become profitable. Twitter is much the same, they are still in the Red. As each of the now existing big social media giants works to catch up financially with Google, Google will continue to build and perfect it’s Google Buzz.

It is clear that everyone should be using social media and that means learning to capitalize as much as you can on Facebook and Twitter today. But another question you may want to ask yourself is how much stock do you want to put into any one single social media website. Look at MySpace, at one time it was one of the biggest social media sites on the net. But today it has lost must of it’s luster.

The beauty of a Search Engine is, it is not dependent on the whims of the people (i.e. doing what is trendy or whatever the current FAD might be) and it does not depend on the success of failure of one social network. Even if Google Buzz fails or never picks up, Google has plenty of other properties and plenty of other ways they can stick with their company mission.

Google is dependent on maintaining proper algorithm’s in order to create relevant results and it is dependent on continuing to create an audience, which businesses will pay to reach. As long as they do that, Google will always have relevance in the marketplace and people will continue to use it predominantly as a tool to find what they want.

So do not let the fear mongers convince you that the writing is on the wall and Google is on it’s way out. Do not let them convince you that you must change all your business over today and you need to buy some program to teach you how, because the proof is in the stats of page visits or usage.

Whenever anyone says that, look deeper into what the results really say and think about how people are using the networks mentioned. Then you will have a much clearer picture, that is not marred by your emotions or even a little bit of naivety, that you might not want to admit you have.

OK… after using Google Friend Connect a little bit and adding it to my site. I have learned a few more things and found a few things that maybe I don’t like so much or that make it confusing for me.

First off, I wanted to clarify a little further about what Google Friend Connect is or at least my understanding of it so far… (since I’m still a bit new myself)

First, you set up a profile… you can do it with just about any email address you have, but as I said in an earlier post, it is far better and more useful to you, if it happens to be a Gmail address. Because then you get all the benefits that Google has to offer. In case you have never used Gmail, it’s not really a problem if you don’t want to change your email address or you don’t want to use Gmail’s web mail application (which I’ve no idea why you wouldn’t).

The reason this isn’t a problem, is Gmail is designed to give you lots of choices and freedoms with how you choose to use it. Do you love outlook or outlook express and have to have every email downloaded via a POP connection… you can do that with Gmail… you can have the message kept in the Inbox, archived (so you know when you log in via the web while away from you computer, what messages haven’t been read yet.) or you can even have the messages deleted after you download. The choice is yours.

Also with Gmail, you can forward every message that comes in to that address to any other email box that you own. You can even send filtered messages only to any other email address. After you verify that you own an email address, you can have it added to your Gmail account so that you send and receive email from any other address you own too, all through the same Gmail interface. This gives you the ability to look as if are still using your other email address. Of course you can only receive them in your Gmail box if you forward them to your Gmail account or if you have them downloaded via POP from your other service. Yes, all that is free with Gmail. How many other services do you know of that can do all that? See Gmail does fit into your life…

But this message isn’t about Gmail… I may have gotten carried away and will have to save the rest for another post. So where were we?

…ah yes, setting up a profile using Gmail as your address.

The downside is, if you happen to have more than one Gmail account that you use frequently, perhaps with different people… you can only be logged into one account at a time and you probably don’t want to try and cheat Google, by creating as many profiles as you can and then joining lots of the same sites, with all your profiles, think about it, it’s Google, they already know practically everything about you online (they have tons of tiny little spiders constantly scouring the web, digging up information on you)… besides it might not be that effective anyway. I happen to have a Gmail account I only use for personal email and another that is for more online business related stuff.

Plus, I have Google Apps accounts for a couple of my businesses. So I use them too… Fortunately Apps Accounts are Google related accounts, (I’ll explain more about the advantages of Google Apps accounts in a future post), but I haven’t completely explored yet, what limitations there might be if using a Google Apps account as your primary address. I’ll let you know in a future post what I find out and which profile I decide to use… (but I better decide fast, because I don’t want friends all over the place…any ideas on how to solve this dilemma anybody??)

Now let’s continue talking about Google Friend Connect.

Second, after you create your profile, you will notice that any site can set itself up as a mini network. You literally join a site, when you join at the bottom. So think of sites as a way to connect with friends… or like joining other networks. In this case, I now have a private social networking group that is centered around my site, http://speakingbadger.com, where people can leave comments on pages, about my site and any products or services I may sell or recommend.

The difference is, the power of Google is behind this and every site, can be networked and shared with anyone that joins my site… so it can have a viral effect on my site. Plus, it integrates with Google Feeder… and that’s a whole other story.. (more about that in a future post)

Google Friend Connect is so big, it might be a bit hard to wrap your head around… I know it is for me. But I’m getting there and like Chris Lang, I’m getting excited and plan to do my best to share as much as I can about it. Now Chris may have the inside track and he even has a paid course, that I’m probably going to take, but I’m reading and learning and testing for myself… so I can surely help you learn as well from my own experiences, because as a marketer, I see the power of using Google Friend Connect. But now is the best time to capitalize on it.

This post has gone on long enough… I now have plenty of other things to blog about, learn and share with all of you. Please join me on Google Friend Connect and let’s take this journey together before anyone else does. Let me be one of your guides and please, if you learn something before I share it, let me know.

I have come across some rather amazing new information, that I’m quite sure will be taking the Internet by storm sometime in the not too far distant future. As of right now, this new network is a bit hush-hush. Google, is quite ready and may not want you to know yet, because they are still setting things up, doing beta testing and preparing to dominate the social networking scene.

Imagine a social network that spans the entire internet. If you are a marketing, then you will also be happy to know that the Google Behemoth is behind it. Every Internet Marketer wants to rank high in the search engines and if you rank high in Google, then you basically have just written your own ticket.

You may notice here on my site a bar across the bottom… it gives you a way to log in or sign up as a part of the Google Friend Connect Network. To take advantage of the full power of this network, you really do want to have a Google ID, meaning a Gmail account of some kind. But you might be happy to know, you can also join using a some other online ID’s, among them being your Yahoo ID or an Open ID…

With a little bit of code this gives every website on the net a way to have user comments and shared discussions. Not only can you allow every discussions and comment that appears on your site, to exist on every page of your website, but you can also have them be page specific.

The obvious downside to this, is only those sites that participate by installing the proper code can be apart of this network, right now anyway… meaning you can’t comment poorly on those sites that may not be as legitimate… but then again, unlike a traditional social networking site, any site can be a part of this network and the conversations that exist. So, you can actually have more than a basic profile that is completely controlled by the network you are on… so more freedom.

This ability to refer your friends to sites and give feedback, creating a ’sticky’ effect every where you go, with plenty of ‘word of mouth‘ advertising, could be so powerful that perhaps anyone that isn’t a part of the network, will just go unnoticed and miss out on all the traffic.

The amount of traffic and backlinks that can be gained as an Internet Marketer is tremendous, so if you aren’t doing it or checking it out, you are truly missing out. After you join me, you can just ask, and I’ll share a lot of very useful information or at least another source, that gives a ton of details regarding how you to can use this Google Friend Connect in all your marketing efforts.

After you join, you will see that there are several plugins and tools, that can be used in a variety of ways, so feel free to leave a comment, where you will see one way, or just go to the bottom of this page and join my network… or just sign in to your Google Account.

I look forward to seeing you as a friend on Google Friend Connect.