Searchial Marketing

Book excerpt: The "buzz" surrounding social media focuses on how business can build relationships by participating in the online "conversation". When it works, social media relationship building is often labor and time intensive with a return on investment that is often hard to measure. Not many people understand that social media campaigns can be orchestrated to build relationships and drive in new business at a much greater rate than using the relationship aspect of social media alone provides. When I discovered this, relationship building became the least compelling part of the picture. "Searchial" is a phrase I created to describe the method of interacting within the strange new world of social media while elevating your profile in internet searches for the products and services you offer. This book teaches do-it-yourself methods of implementing a "searchial" media campaign. It demonstrates the added value of practicing "searchial media" instead of just "social media". Social tools have the power to drive new business into your organization not only through communicating and relationship building, but by coincidentally causing your listing in search engines to rank higher in searches for keywords and key phrases people are using to find the products and services you offer in a specific geographical area or worldwide. The term "Searchial" reflects the realization that my time and effort were best spent driving new patients into my medical practice using social tools to improve our position in Google, Bing and other search engines, not just building and strengthening existing relationships. This book can be applied to and used as a guide within any industry at any stage of the new media marketing game. Appendices contain information specific to social media and search elevation in the medical profession, specifically small medical business, hospital and clinic and pharmaceutical companies.