What is the best content for social media? This is the question that I’ve been asked to respond to at the recent Social Media Economy Days event in Munich, Germany. I was scheduled as speaker on day 1 but unfortunately I missed my flight and it was difficult for the organizers to arrange a change in the agenda – so I ended up not giving the presentation, after working hard on it. But – since it is now ready, let’s share it! Here is my Social Media Economy Days presentation for everybody to enjoy!

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As I often say, it is good to serve at the SEMPO’s Board of Directors, as I can have very good exchanges with some of the smartest minds in the search and online marketing industry. A couple of months ago (maybe a little more) fellow SEMPO Board Director Duane Forrester asked a question: Search or Discoverability? What’s your search strategy?

I believe Duane is in the process of writing a(nother) online marketing book, and the search versus discoverability topic surely seemed to be of some interest to him.

A good conversation raised around the topic, in a closed circle of emails with inputs from the likes of Dana Todd, Sara Holoubek, Jessica Bowman and Chris Boggs among the others, so I dropped my 2 percent to the conversation.

Today I found that old thread and decided to copy and paste my input on the matter, so to share it with you all – I would like to get your comments and your opinion on the search versus discoverability discussion, use the comment box below and feel free to tweet about this article.

Here we go – enjoy the reading!

Rock on – I like the question. In my opinion it is all a matter of positioning and target audience. Some “things” (businesses, events, organizations, brands, products) are not meant for a broad publicity, and do not need to be visible to everybody, but are meant to be discovered – by the right audience.

Some example? The first that comes to my mind is, of course, the Burning Man Festival and year-round community, but this can be applied also to products (niche-specific products such as specialty medical treatments or specialized construction or boating gear etc), organizations (i.e. Rotary Clubs, Masonic groups, exclusive Golf clubs, Museums Donors Funds, etcetera), businesses (highly specialized products and services) and brands (cult underground clothing brands, cult alternative music bands or film productions, etc.).

Basically, there is a whole word out there who doesn’t need to be slapped into everybody’s face – in advertising terms, they will never buy Superbowl airtime nor outdoor advertising.

These brand, products, organizations, etc. need to be discovered – not to be visible to everybody. In marketing-advertising terms, this can be achieved thanks to the recommendations and trust circles generated by the 2.0-social world (discovery by trusted input) or (and) thanks to search marketing, of course! =)

Search marketing (SEO and SEM) can definitely fit both needs, allowing to achieve either the largest possible audience (full-on visibility) or a very niche-specific, long tail target (can I call “meet the demand” a “piloted discovery“?).

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SEMPO Italy, the Italian Working Group of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization to which I proudly belong and serve as Board of Directors member, is finally going public in Italy with a bold move.

After few sporadic public appearances over this last year, mostly search marketing presentation from myself and fellow SEMPO Italia friends Marco Loguercio and Miriam Bertoli at online and interactive events across Italy, tomorrow SEMPO Italia will offer a free full day of search marketing workshop in the frame of the big double event ExpoComm Italia / Broadband Business Forum in Rome, Italy.

SEMPO Italia’s search marketing workshop will take place during the entire day tomorrow December 2, 2008, starting at 10 am and closing at 5.30 pm with a search networking party. Top Italian search marketers will be sharing their search knowledge with the audience talking about basics and advanced topics of search, and running also “site clinic” sessions with the participants in the audience.

Topics of the SEMPO Italia Search Marketing Workshop, moderated by Nereo Sciutto (WebRanking), will be: Basics of Search Engine Optimization (Sante Achille, Sintesi), Basic of paid search (Daniela Trifone, SEMS), Copywriting for search engines (Marco Conte, TSW), Search 3.0, blogs e social media (this would be my presentation for tomorrow), and Web Analytic (Nicola Tanzini, InTarget.net).

Following the full day of search workshop SEMPO Italia will throw a networking party with the italian search industry – undisclosed guests are expected, and I will surely blog some more about this event.

For more info on the SEMPO Italia Search Workshop of December 2, 2008, please refer to the SEMPO Italia blog.

See you in Rome tomorrow for the workshop or the after-party!

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