With the line between search and social media blurring, what happens next?

“One’s first inclination might be to get the heck out of the way and see how it all shakes out. But can you really afford to? You’ll miss all the fun, not to mention some of the opportunity,” writes Norm Elrod, a digital media consultant. On SearchEngineWatch.com, he reports in “Where Search and Social Media Collide: Real-Time Search and Twitter” about a panel discussion on the topic. Among the points Elrod highlights are the following.

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, said search engines will be able to select the more trustworthy sources of social media information. He advised making content that appeals to social users, and then nudging them to push it out to others.

Companies can follow Google Trends, base content on seasonal events, and catch the wave of popularity as it swells, said Harry J. Gold, CEO, Overdrive Interactive. Google loves new content, especially with the incorporation of social media. Marketers should create it and push it out to social media outlets.

Mike Mothner, founder and CEO of Wpromote Inc., said companies that worked hard to gain rankings for commercial search terms may find themselves pushed down the page by real-time search results. Real-time search also expands the reach of social media. Interactions in the Twitter-sphere now have much larger reach. Reputation management is harder.

The SSN take: It’s a brave—and sometimes scary—new world, but as Elrod says, the opportunity belongs to those who participate.

John Sniffen, April 14, 2010

Note: Post not sponsored.