the ultimate objective of most social media/social networking/social web business efforts is conversion through raised, preferably engaged, awareness. effective SM vehicles succeed in this disproportionately to their actual reach – recall that penetration of SM use, while growing, is still less than 50% on average (3% for current media darling twitter).

how does this happen? social media buzz translates into more and higher placement on search engine results, where penetration is essentially universal. wikipedia. linkedin. facebook. increasingly these are the results that show up at the top of the list – over those of the businesses that are the source of the searched-for goods or services. social media enhances the search results by providing peer validation for the searcher.

“but ranking for key words or phrases is not sustainable.” ah, but social media is, and an effective SM strategy will keep those keywords bubbling at the top of the search stew.