Dr. Amy Vanderbilt

CEO & Chief Strategist

The TrendPOV Show

http://DrAmyVanderbilt.com

Dr. Amy Vanderbilt is the Founder and Chief Strategist at TrendPOV.com, next generation social omni-media that over 600 thousand executives call GPS for your business strategy. She is an award-winning author, show host, executive coach, speaker, and commentator.Her career has enjoyed a fast climb through the ranks of academia, large business, small business, and even the Government by harnessing the power of emerging trends and her unique ability to understand where they are going, and how to use them for competitive advantage.

Searching for answers used to be manual and less interactive yet incorporated a wider range of sources. Search engines have made searching a lot easier, but according to John Sotruo on experts-comptables-fr.org, “50% of queries go unanswered.” He added, “Social search could be the biggest breakthrough since page ranking.” Facebook has over 800 million users whose time spent on the site is growing and, according to jonathanbudd.com, “Time on site” is a more important metric than traffic. Google tried to compete for users’ precious time by introducing social network, Google + in 2011 but uptake has been slow. Meanwhile, Facebook is trying to incorporate a wider type of search into social media. Currently, as Zucherberg said in an interview at Tech Crunch Disrupt that was reported on searchengineland.com, “Facebook is doing a billion searches per day and we’re not even trying.”Searching was once a laborious process, but in recent years, technology has expanded the boundaries of our searches so the results we seek are often no more than a click, a touch or a swipe away. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have expanded our horizons way beyond telephone directories, reference books and encyclopedias, but social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and more recently, Google Plus have taken search to a new level. So, the problem is that social is trying to act more like traditional search and traditional search is acting like social search, that is, Google is trying to be Facebook and Facebook is trying to be Google! The future ultimately lies in user-driven content that will enhance search; however as Sotruo said, “Social search will not change the foundation of marketing but it will change the way in which you present your information to generate leads.” To turn this trend into an advantage for your business, consider the following. The social search transition will take time. Do not abandon your regular search efforts. Develop social search efforts separately. Then, merge regular and social search efforts if needed. Lastly, watch the evolution of social search carefully. This trend may or may not pan out.