You know how politicians often break out the “tax ax“?
I think I’m going to coin the “buzzword bazooka“

If ‘pride goes before the fall’, then buzzwords go before pride.

If you work with search engines, you should probably know a few languages including HTML (I know it’s only markup!), PHP and Javascript. You don’t need to be fluent in PHP or Javascript, but you should at least know how to order dinner and find the toilet.

The fact is that search engine theory is just that, theory. Only a very few number of people know exactly how Google, MSNbot and Yahoo (soon to be Bing/MSNbot) crawlers work in a scientific sense. They’re not going to tell us anytime soon, just like Coca-Cola isn’t going to be tweeting their famous recipe any time soon. You have a whole industry based on theory, and rarely is it scientific enough to pass any muster. Buzzwords and phrases thrive in such areas. So let’s break down some fallacies.

1. Content is king: Flat out wrong. The conversion is king. How you define conversion is your own choice, such as a sale, a newsletter sign up, or a lead. What ever it is, if you have millions of visitors, and the site hasn’t generated anything for you but server load, you can talk about content all day and it won’t matter. The fact is that your website has a goal, perhaps monetary or just collecting data. Content is a part of getting conversions, and helps bring that data in, but if you have a store full of browsers and no buyers, you really can’t show that to an investor.  New buzz phrase that won’t catch on, but should: Content is a high ranking military strategist.
2. It’s all about links: Frustrating. This is like having 1,000 acquaintances and no real friends. For every link that you make a visitor/customer jump through you have a loss of about 9%. Considering all your customer has to do is literally lift a finger, that’s quite alarming.
   Yes, link building is important. Content more so, but if you have a background in marketing, you probably know how to make content compelling, and conversion friendly already. In a world of exponential social media growth, why link to your twitter account when you can integrate live streams getting the content AND the link search engine credit? Why link, when you can INTEGRATE?
   New buzz phrase that won’t catch on, but should: Linking is the poor man’s integrating.
3. We don’t have time for Social Media. Oh really? I suppose you don’t have a customer service phone either then. Customer service doesn’t generate much revenue, it prevents lost revenue. Business has made it so hard to get something fixed in the name of cost cutting that The Oatmeal sums it up best. If I have a product that doesn’t work as it is supposed to, I have a 50% chance that I will ebay it, just so I don’t have to deal with a non-tech savvy dotard reading from a HTML wizard.
   Social media, when used socially and not a one way sales push pipe, can transform your target audience’s perception of you. Imagine actually being able to create a quick custom check list of things to check for on their own time for each person because you have a record of their issue and statements. Who would call then?
   I know what you’re thinking. Ben we don’t have the resources for that. If I learned anything as a teenager, it was that I can have 5 simultaneous conversations online as opposed to 1 on the phone. By that measure, for every 5 of your phone reps I need one social rep. Sounds like a money saver down the road considering more than half the world population is under 30. Plus it is SEO friendly provided the link shorteners are 301 redirects.
   New buzz phrase that won’t catch on, but should: Social is the new survey/customer service hybrid.

Yes these are all parts of the search engine system, but take a step back and realise that it is a dance. You can’t dance with one leg, and you can’t get to the top of the page rank with just links. Spending too much time on SEO and not on being better for your customer is only the marginal gain you could have from actually just being better than your competitor.

So, what other buzzwords and theories need a bazooka reality check?

Image from suicidemachine.org

The mass defriending, purging or cleansing of your Twitter followers, or Facebook and MySpace friends, and LinkedIn Connections is what I’m talking about. Like a nuclear option, or as some hippies say, ‘Getting off the grid’.

A new site dubbed The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, has made that process a little more expedient.

I did it once, to my MySpace account. Not because my reputation was sullied, but because I got sick of MySpace’s notoriously long load time. But it felt great anyway.

It was inevitable. Anything that booms, has adjustments and detractors. My former boss told me of stories of secretaries that refused to switch from typewriters to computers. Way to be on the wrong side of history! But you can’t blame them with the online dis-inhibition effect and the ruining of reputations online.

Is it anything to worry about? Not really. Social media and social media suicide campaigns aren’t in direct competition. Like a candidate in an election that boycotts his own race, he/she will  not win, but merely make a statement about the election itself.

Don’t tell the Iranian government, but dissent is an important bumper on the rails of ambition. It is never glamorous or popular, but it serves a purpose.  See the following:

“Even when dissenters don’t have enough votes to to change The Court’s (referring to the US Supreme Court) opinion, they still affect the process.” – Ori Brafman form Sway: The Irresistible  Pull of Irrational Behavior

“It makes the other person take account of the point. They have to answer it or they have to take it into account” - Justice Stephen Breyer, US Supreme Court

These guard rails of logic are helpful, but dubbing it suicide might be a bit much. It is possible to be a “Negative Nancy”. I remember a student that would almost ubiquitously start any response with “It’ll never work…” What kind of help does that bring to the table? Well depending on what follows. Answer it, or account for it I say.

And much like a repressive regime, unfortunately Facebook has threatened legal action against the The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. Especially since the young CEO of Facebook just said that privacy online is not to be expected anymore as a ‘social norm’, you would think he could take a lesson in timing.

Maybe the solution for Facebook is to take a look at Google and apply the motto “Don’t Be Evil” a little more generously.

Go on, let them ‘commit 2.0 suicide’. Why not? They won’t be tweeting, posting or updating about it now will they?

Also see: Social Media Backlash?