Long ago people sat around their radio to listen to their favorite radio show. They knew when it came on, and who sponsored it. Then they bought that sponsor’s products because they appreciated the radio show that sponsor produced. Then came the television. Ads made up less than ten minutes of each one-hour show. Again, people appreciated their sponsors and bought their products. This went on for close to 50 years.

As the internet grew from its roots in the ’90s, email sprouted as the new means of business communication; quicker than the U.S. Mail, and less intrusive on our time than making a phone call. Little did anyone know that email would change the way the world markets its products, when in 1994, the first email spam  (a loose reference to Hormel’s canned meat) was sent, spawning the age of the “uninvited guest” into our personal space. As the deluge began, people became protective of “my” inbox. At the same time, the internet sprouted “pop-up” and “banner” ads that seemed to come from nowhere. They were intrusive and entirely unwelcome.

Respected sponsors were quickly becoming a thing of the past. Ads on radio, TV, and now email and the internet, became numerous and began to compete for your attention, and they were shunned as terribly bothersome as they spun out of control. What changed everything was the development of pop-up blockers, spam filters, and digital video recorders such as TiVo. Marketers gradually realized they had to devise new ways to get their products out there, and develop your trust in them once again.

Trust is the main issue on which social media was built. Social media became the word-of-mouth contact that was the one thing remaining that people felt they could trust. People can initiate and control a conversation, and ask their pointed questions. When they feel that they have been answered sufficiently, they gain trust in the representative of that information. The value of that trust was a pivotal part in the emergence of social media as the new advertising media of choice.

Before long it became apparent that much of social media was becoming “canned” content and gradually untrustworthy. People discovered it was just the marketers spewing out their ads to them, representing themselves as trustable consumers. This is when the owners and CEOs of companies stepped up to the plate, and miraculously exposed themselves as human beings instead of the untouchable executives at the top. They put themselves out there in blogs, on Twitter, Facebook, etc. People got a kick out of that, and respected them for it. People wanted to talk to them, to have their chance to air their beefs or praises to them. It was discovered that boldfaced transparency was the way to develop that lost trust again. When someone feels they’ve had a one-to-one, personal conversation with the CEO, they feel connected and loyal to that company, and therefore more inclined to buy their products.

The next step was the enterprising people who came out of nowhere and established themselves as respected CEOs of their own companies through social media, actually building their companies around their social presence on the web. They used email blasts (opt-in, of course), webinars, YouTube videos, seminars, blogs, etc. The next thing you knew you saw them guesting on the Today Show or the Tonight Show, talking about the wild success they’ve become!

This is where we stand today. You can go onto Twitter or Facebook and speak directly to the CEO of just about any company, find them on LinkedIn, or search for their company blogs on Google or Bing and comment on their posts. People feel connected again. They naively feel like they’ve bypassed the middlemen (marketers), who still leave that bad taste in their mouths.

So where will it go next? What should we expect now in the years to come? Tell us what you think.

So have you ever wondered just what the search engines see when they visit your site? Here’s a great way to get an idea of it. I’d like you to open another browser window so you can navigate to your website without losing my site window.

I’ll assume you’ve done that. Now view the “source” code of that page. With each browser you will have to access this a little differently, but you’ll find the option somewhere in the top navigation bar for your browser.

Now, unless you know a little bit about html, you probably won’t understand much of what you see in this window. Here’s the catch — if you don’t find the text on your home page clearly visible somewhere in this long (hopefully!) page of code, then either can the search engines! This code very closely resembles exactly what the search engines see when they visit your site.

If the text of your home page is embedded in images or in a flash presentation, then the search engines have no way to “read” your home page. Your home page is the page that is supposed to give the search engines all the information they need to know about your website; for instance, the name of your company, what your company generally does, all the links to the other pages in your website, the location of your business (for geo-location purposes), etc. If the search engine spiders don’t find that information there, they will simply move on to the next website. That will invariably leave you wondering for weeks, months, even years why your site just doesn’t show up on the first page when you search for it, even though you’re the only widget builder in town.

Can you see where this is going? I can’t tell you how many times I hear clients say something like, “My site must have the WOW factor right when people get there. I want a flash splash page!”

Okay, I’m done gagging. People, people, people! Flash is great! Yes, I’ll say that. But please, can we constrain it to pieces strategically placed on well-optimized home pages? NOT the whole darn page, please. Go out there and find a website that I’m sure really has the WOW factor (that’s ‘why oh why’ in my book) because of its flash intro. Please view the source code of that page. You will find that the source code is only about 15 or so lines long, and not one bit of it contains the all-important text about your company that the search engines need to find.

Now I’ll admit that Google has started pulling text out of flash pieces, but they are the only search engine doing this.

I’m just amazed when I visit a site that has the entire site navigation built in flash. How does that company expect the search engines to navigate to any page other than the home page? It can’t be done.

If I am able to dissuade just one person from insisting on a flash splash page, then I’ve accomplished my mission here. Please just let that be you.

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Ah, that felt good! What I’ve just experienced was a long holiday sabbatical away from all things blog related. If you think less of me for doing that then you should take a good long look at your own life and commitments and the value you place on them.

There’s a point coming here. Even though I took a break from blogging, I didn’t lose touch completely. I have a select group of tweeple (twittiquette for people you tweet with on twitter.com) whom I follow and listen carefully to regarding social marketing. They all pretty much agree that it is very necessary that you should contribute to your blog a bare minimum of once per week. On a general basis, I agree, but only for the sake of giving your readers something interesting to repeatedly come back for.

Let’s face it folks! This IS real life here. Although my readers are in my top five list of priorities, I have to put my family and household higher up. And I have no guilt for it. I am neither married to my job or my blog.

Okay, enough with the diatrite about priorities. The hiatus is over and I’m back. And while I was gone I may not have been typing, but my mensan mind was ticking. Look for upcoming posts about splash pages, the evolution of twitter, the iPhone, web design in our failing market, and more.

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