I have heard many arguments about separating SEO and social media by trying to decypher which is more valuable. Here are a few questions that marketers use for producing arguments:

• Which is more important … SEO or social media?
• Which discipline provides the higher return on investment?
• How do you calculate the ROI of social media?
• SEO? Isn’t that some sort of fairy dust?
• How do you separate chicken poop from toothpaste?

OK, that last one was my own personal interpretation, but seriously … how can people get this so mixed up that they stand in their corner spewing their respective knowledge without coming together in the center and having a big group hug?

I just read a blog article about a poor customer experience with US Airways. It got me to thinking about the ways we listen, and I think it could be described as two different types of ears.

Consumer Listening: Skeptical Ears

The first type of ears are those of a consumer. We have consumer listening skills which are pretty basic and instinctive. These are the ears we use to hear scandal and negativity. Most people have this set of ears cranked way up to hear anything they need to know as a consumer.

Consumer watchdogs are everywhere, and social media brings them out in a big way. In fact, it allows each and every one of us to be a consumer watchdog and to tell our story. Anybody with a bad experience can make a pretty loud sound using social media.

In 1982 when the world heard that somebody had laced Tylenol products with potassium cyanide, many people were terrified to take a Tylenol for their headache for fear it would kill them. Some caution was in order, for certain. I remember my mother dumping out any Tylenol we had in the house after watching the reports on television. Was it realistic to believe we actually had laced Tylenol in our own home? Probably not, but similar types of unrealistic caution and chaos are still happening every day in social media. Can you imagine how many more people would have been [...]

Eureka Springs, Arkansas is a lovely little tourist destination … blah blah FAIL!
Do they wonder why people make fun of Arkansas, or do they even hear it? Maybe they just figure people make fun of every state that way. You know, like the way people make fun of all those barefoot inbred hillbillies playing the banjo and smoking corn cob pipes over in Colorado’s tourist destinations.
Sure, for all the jokes, there is charm in Eureka Springs. Sometimes it is the kind of charm of looking at an ugly baby. You get a good laugh after the parents are out of [...]

Decorum is defined by Wikipedia as “Appropriate social behavior; propriety” or “A convention of social behavior”. Since it is a social topic, the standards of decorum are different depending on the social group. Yes, the people count, and what may seem completely innocent to you could be a great offense to another person with a different imposed expectation of decorum. It is more important than ever to be aware of the standards of decorum as it applies to your business, particularly due to the vast mingling of social media in business.
A lot of people talk about transparency in business these [...]