spending SEO money on your community

Tony Welch: “How many of you do SEO or SEM? SEO and SEM will be dead as you know it within 6 months. Google is going to take into account now much more about what’s happening. Now, when people [type] in your name, people will see social conversations about your company showing up in Google results, from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr. It’s now about brand management vs. SEO.”

Dave Allen: “Great, so you can take all that money you put into SEO and SEM and put it into community management. And you should not retain your assets but spread them as far and as wide as possible. If we are moving away from SEO/SEM and into community and reputation, then it is of tremendous importance to protect and monitor communities and reputations.”

[ Via Who Killed Social Media? Reputation, Community Management, and the Future of Branding ]

I am very excited to work in the community space for at least 100 reasons. (Remind me to publish a list someday.) One of which is my shared belief that more and more companies will begin to shift resources away from PR, SEO, and other attempts to “control the message”, and invest more time and energy (and capitol) into “participating in the message” (which is owned by everyone other than the company).

Oh, and make sure you dig this gem out of that quote above: “it is of tremendous importance to protect … communities”.

Are you listening?