Outsmarting Social Media Profiting in the Age of Friendship Marketing

This book is about the brewing war between Google and Facebook.  It's about the intersection of search and social media, and who will control that intersection.  Google knows everything you search for, but that is no longer enough.  They have become jealous of Facebook, who knows every personal detail about you; Google wishes they could have all of that social data themselves.  They would like to use that data - the opinions of our friends and connections - to retool the search results.  Facebook, on the other hand, is jealous of the power Google has over people's purchasing decisions.  Because both Facebook and Google know our friends are where we get many of the recommendations that we value (What smartphone is the best? Was that movie worth seeing? Who makes the best running shoe?) they both want to exploit our online friendships.  But there is a big problem.  Both companies control their own piece of the puzzle - Facebook has our social circles and Google has our purchasing channels - and neither company is interested in sharing with the other.  Thus, social search nirvana won't happen overnight.  This book is a peek into the future of what search engines and social media channels will look like in the future, when the two have largely merged.  The people in our social networks will become driving forces - tastemakers, so to speak - in how advertisers market to us. If Facebook knows that one of your valued Facebook friends loves Klipsch speakers and then you search for home theater speakers on Google, you might see your friend's recommendation for Klipsch speakers at or near the top of the search results.  If your friends post a lot of pictures on Facebook of concerts at The Greek Theatre, Facebook may begin advertising other Greek Theatre concerts to you using these pictures of your friends.  Tomorrow's ads will be nothing like todays; they will reflect our friends'likes and interests.   Digital marketers will find this book extremely valuable since they currently rely on social media sites and search engines to drive marketing.  With social information playing a dominant role in both outlets, the face of digital marketing is shifting.  On Google, the things your friends talk about will color the search results - and the ads around those results.  Two people searching for the same thing will see different results based on the opinions of people in their social circles.  On Facebook and Twitter, new status updates and ads will appear featuring our friends'preferences - and this will influence our purchases.  The holy grail of marketing, as it were, will be knowing how to use your relationships to motivate other people to making purchases.  This book shows readers exactly how to do that.  Don't be left behind. Get a leg up on your competition!

Evan Bailyn, founder of First Page Sage, is an Internet entrepreneur and expert in search engine optimization and social media. He has elevated online presence and revenue for Fortune 500 companies, celebrities, small businesses, and nonprofits, and has used his Google SEO expertise to build and sell five businesses, including one of the web's largest children's sites, Cartoon Doll Emporium. The author of Outsmarting Google: SEO Secrets to Winning New Business, he has been interviewed on ABC and Fox News, and been covered in Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.