Think Young For a Solid Long-Term Business Plan
by Katherine Keleher
Internet promotion has undergone
quite a few changes over the last five years, with many more on their way in the
coming years. One good way to develop your long-term online business plan is to
keep an eye on the trends among young people today. When you think about it, the
high school students of today will be your target market in 5-10 years. As their
search habits change, so will the market share held by the search engines. This
will require internet marketers to come up with new methods of site promotion in
order to keep up with the changing market.
These tech-savvy youths approach the Internet differently because they have
grown up using it as a common household appliance, just like the television or
the phone. They spend time socializing online through chat rooms, IMs, message
boards, and Myspace and are likely to have developed attachments to their online
communities. A teen will often pose his or her question to their particular peer
group instead of looking through generic results on the search engines. Forums
are especially useful for obtaining very detailed and up to date answers to a
specific problem.
Similarly, Wikipedia-type sites are becoming trusted resources among young
people. The definition of a wikipedia (from Wikipedia.org, of course) is "is an
international Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It exists as a wiki, a
website that allows visitors to edit its content". The public editing process
gives the wikis a communal feel that both appeals to young people and also
serves to improve the quality of information provided.
Just as my generation laughed at our parents' inability to program a VCR, this
new generation is befuddling many of us with its rapidly developing and changing
terminology. For example, only a couple of years ago, only tech geeks and lonely
high schoolers were likely to have a blog. Now, even former Dodgers manager
Tommy LaSorda is peddling his baseball blog in radio ads. Now there's a sure
sign that blogging has become part of the mainstream culture.
It's not enough anymore just to have a blog on your site. You also need to
understand how to use tags and social bookmarking sites on that blog or you will
miss out on a huge amount of visitors. The most active bloggers are found
hanging around at sites like Furl, Reddit, del.icio.us, and Backflip, not
Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
These social bookmarking sites are by far the greatest threat to the search
engines' market share. The basic concept behind social bookmarking is that real
people vote for webpages they have actually seen and like enough to recommend,
instead of a search engine ranking pages based on its own secret algorithm.
Anyone can register an account on these sites and share "bookmarks" to their
favorite sites. Most of these sites allow the submitter to also include several
keyword tags and a short description.
Another rising challenge to the search engines is the mobile web. Cell phones
have become the Swiss Army knife of technology. It is now possible to make phone
calls, shoot video clips, watch television, surf the Web, IM, and play MP3s, all
on one convenient device that fits in your pocket.
It is still too early to tell what effect these newer, more versatile phones
will have on computer sales and search engine numbers. Many phone providers come
with a mobile version of Google, Yahoo! or MSN, so there will be some overlap
there.
As these developing technologies become more common, the market share held by
search engines will decrease significantly. A solid long-term plan is crucial
for webmasters who wish to sustain their business as market conditions shift.
About the Author:
Katherine is the creator of
the new
SubmitNow! automatic directory submitter
and also runs several niche websites. For more tips on speeding up your SEO
tasks, visit
http://www.lazyseo.com
or send a blank email to
lazyseo@aweber.com.
Source of article:
www.goarticles.com
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