The four day Web 2.0 Expo which started on 16th Sep, 2008 is closing tomorrow 19th Sep in New York. The expo had interesting sessions on various topics including the social media that gets neglected often.
One of the hot topics that were discussed in the expo was Online Customer Communities that Connect and Thrive. The discussion identified that many people join these community sites to find some marketing benefits more than social reasons besides other incentives that they get. It is not an uncommon phenomenon to see some startup business that promote their products or services by attracting customers with freebies and other incentives including money gifts for participation and for referring their services or products to others. Ironically not many of these campaigns meet with total success. People come flocking when the campaign is on and they will leave at the same pace once the campaigns are closed. So we cannot expect purity of motivation with people who try to benefit from these free gifts. However, those community sites that managed to secure membership out of freewill saw great success and they continue to grow.
Another topic that was discussed was Free Traffic: SEO/SMO 101. This session addressed the growing tendency among marketers who forget about the natural traffic that come through search engines. Most webmasters over emphasize the importance of Web 2.0 approaches to drive traffic to their websites almost ignoring the traditional ways of driving natural traffic. It is important that we pay attention to increasing traffic to websites through organic search traffic. All the other forms of driving traffic will only fetch temporary results; on the long run it is the organic traffic that is reliable.
Disappointment and waiting are part of search engine optimization but we cannot bypass these by opting for other methods. Primary importance should be given to SEO while other ways of driving traffic should be given secondary importance. The expo emphasized the importance of organic traffic.
The same session also identified and admitted that Google is the King. The session very clearly stated that if you are OK with Google, you will be OK with most of the other search engines which will bring you enough traffic to your website. The ultimate equation is, by making your site Google friendly will make your site generally search engine friendly. The logic behind this equation is very simple Google expects thorough optimization which covers the optimization requirements of most of the search engines that are online. Google is playing an undeniably leading role in the area of online advertising, web applications and online search.
This expo has brought home a lot of new insights with regard to the use of the Web 2.0 in both community building and also in web marketing. Though the original intention of community networking sites is to build strong online communities and share information, the derived benefit which is driving traffic to ones own website has made the prime focus now. Unfortunately all the new networking concepts that are evolving come with the shifted interest in mind.