Social Media Marketing: Search and Desire

In the last blog post, I talked about what social media marketing is and what, if anything, it could accomplish. The conversation was broad and more conceptual than anything else. I apologize to our more practical readers, who often just want a step-by-step how-to guide. Unfortunately, the nature of social media marketing precludes such a straightforward set of "how-tos."

I try not to get too abstract in these matters, but I'm afraid that I cannot in this discussion. It's just my own quirky process; please bear with me; it's just the philosopher in me.

§ Search and Desire
I had a thought yesterday. Search reflects desire. In other words, when I search for something, that implies that there is a desire longing for fulfillment. It doesn't matter what I'm searching for. Back of every search is a desire. If I Google "best travel deals to nyc," I have a desire to travel, to save money, or what have you. If I Google "piano teachers in central NJ," then it is obvious that I have a desire to learn music, or to give my kids culture, or what have you. If I search for "the galapagos beetle" in Wikipedia, then I have a desire for academic or authoritative information on beetles. Perhaps my desire is to ace that term paper. But the point is that wherever there is search, there precedes desire.

Get my drift? Search represents desire.

Let's look at two of the most popular social media sites - Twitter and Facebook - in the context of this question of desire.

§ Twitter and Desire
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this, so just bear with me please Now that Twitter has a search trends feature, the question I want to answer is: What do Twitter trends tell me about Twitterer desire?

I'm still operating on the theory that search conveys desire. What is the trending desire of the main of Twitterers. That is the psychological question. How to get my products and services on the receiving end of those desires - that is the marketing question.

If, for example, a top Twitter trend is "cinco de mayo," how can I get my business on the other end of that search, that desire? (The question of the tie-in to "cinco de mayo" is a public relations question .... it's all related, you see.)

In asking the question, I've just turned the psychology of social media into the marketing of social media.

§ Facebook and Desire
With Facebook, it's harder to distill desire from search, because there is no data, to my knowledge, of Facebook search trends, at least not one that is publicly accessible. But what we do know is that Facebook has become the most popular people search engine around.

Thus we know that people - friends, old school pals, family - people are the desire behind the Facebook search. So perhaps your business' Facebook page should have a listing of all employees. If not all employees, perhaps all sales people, so that when someone looks for your marketing director or your sales manager or your IT guy, they find your business as well. But you get the idea: to be or not to be on the receiving end of search and desire: that is the social media marketing question.