I hate the word Social Media

I simply hate the word social media. It’s media period.

It is just a new way to communicate. At the end of the day, you only need to help people.

“Make people happy and sell stuff to make them even happier”

Great line and it is your goal on twitter facebook and any of those platforms. Don’t go there just to be “in” go there because you find a way to help people easily.

Make them very happy and they will come back with friends. Social is all about human contact. Make sure your business is focus on the individual and not just on his wallet.

You don’t need social media for your business

Ok Ricky you are crazy to say that?

Not really, I do think you don’t need social media at all. No facebook twitter YouTube etc…

Let me explain you why I say that.

During the past months many companies jump on social media because it was the new hot thing to be on.

To those companies, I say you did not get it at all. The only reason you should join Facebook, twitter, YouTube… is to increase the user experience and make them happy.

Some companies use it as a new PR platform.

Example to a great use of “social media” :

You sell food? Why not create a YouTube channel. In this YouTube channel you can show easy recipe for busy people.

In your store you can tag a food like as seen on “BrandnameTV”

The idea is to help the person without selling.

If you can’t find an original way to help your people so don’t go to any of those platforms.

My 4 online marketing and branding 2010 prediction

This is a new beginning. I hope you are ready for 2010. This is my first post on this side of the website. To kick it properly I decide to do my 2010 online prediction for Online Marketing and branding.

My prediction in 2010

SEO is dead

Yes I said it… Of course it is always important to optimize your website for search engine but SEO is not as important as before.

There are several reasons for that. Search engine like Google or Bing will try to answer your questions right away.(Bing is the decision engine now…) More then ever in 2010 they will focus on user experience. Therefore you better start working on your brand rather than your keywords.

Real Time local Branding

During the last couple month, the new buzz word is “real time”.  The real time movement sucks right now.  There is no order. I think in 2010, local person will establish the main place to know what’s hot in their city.

Exemple: In real time you can discover the perfect night club to go that night etc etc…

It will be a local thing like traffic etc… You want to be part of that then start building your brand right now.

User experience is the new golden rush

The internet is 15 years old and I saw pretty much everything online. Now users want more, they want smart website.

What’s a smart website?

Pretty simple my friend, a smart website is simple to use, don’t try to fool people and has some ethics.

A smart website will do everything possible to make the user happy.

Simple website is the new goal

The internet goes crazy back then with flash and crazy animation to impress the end user. The focus is back to simple website that load faster with less stuff. This is the main reason I keep my design very simple.

Simple website is important because people will access to your website more and more from their mobile phones. You need to keep that in mind to make sure you don’t lose potential customers.