A lot great articles about search lately. Not just search engine optimization, but the whole concept of what search is and how it can be used for engagement etc. Here are some that I’ve been reading:

Mobile Search

People search for things in a context. They are somewhere in the universe and they need to know something. Ten years ago if we wanted to search for something we could use this fancy new thing called the internet and it was awesome. We logged in on our dial up modems and typed our questions. We used computers weighing at least eight pounds to interact with the data. The screens were maybe a foot wide or more.

Increasingly, we’re out in the world and looking for something. We use devices weighing a few ounces. The screens are a few inches wide. We can’t type into them and a noisy real-world environment surrounds us. But we still want to search for something.

“Mobile Search Engine Optimization” describes some of the different ways we use search on the go. We think and act differently when using mobile devices. Your search engine optimization that works so well on a desktop at your office, might not be reaching and engaging a customer who is standing within ten feet of your product or service. This is an emerging area of research so expect more in this vein.

Want to get ready for a mobile search world? The future of the mobile web is available to you every weekend.

Lifestyle Real Estate Search

While Union Street Media customers have been using our One Click Real Estate Search technology to craft custom lifestyle real estate searches on their sites for some time, there are an increasing number of services and aggregators focusing on creating real estate searches that highlight more than just price and location. Joel Burslem gives a roundup of several, including the Onboard Infomatics Lifestyle Listings Engine (which looks pretty sweet).

How do people search for real estate?

Understanding what people type into search engines is very important to getting the reach you need for your site. It helps you put your site in front of people that may find your site relevant. There’s been a fair amount of chatter about “natural language search” vs the “old” checkbox-zip-code-how-many-bathrooms approach. The FBS Blog (quickly becoming one of my favorites, by the way) gives a quick take on natural language search and whether it applies to real estate.

Image by luc legay via Flickr

When I first started writing on the Real Estate Internet Marketing Blog I wrote a weekly review roundup post every Friday. I’m going to revise this practice for a couple (of selfish) reasons:

1. It’s fairly easy to do, I’m reading these things anyway.
2. I think you’ll find something useful in the links provided and remember this blog as a place that points you towards something useful.
3. I’m hoping you engage in the topics represented and as a result your business, life or both improve.
4. I the trackbacks/pingbacks on the articles listed bring relevant and useful traffic to this blog.
5. I want you to know what sort of things I read so you can tell me about other things I might like.

For what it’s worth, these five reasons are good for you to link to others as well. It isn’t about “linklove” or helping to promote someone or any of that stuff.

At Inman Connect New York, Jeff Turner had a great presentation about understanding and using the concept of engagement to help your website perform better. One of the charts he used is from Logic + Emotion, a blog by David Armano. This week’s outbound post features several of Armano’s great charts about social media marketing.

Are you creating, providing or receiving unexpected value?

In the short, text-only post Unexpected Value, Armano describes some thinking that occured as a result of a small bit of text at the end of a friend’s email. It was about “the little things.” But that’s a little too simplistic perhaps. He describes the hand written notes and personal touches and, related to social media marketing, the “unexpected value I recieved from the millions of micro-interactions I have with people online—most whom I’ve never met before.” (I think I might be responsible for one of these) For those of us engaged in social media marketing, there are all sorts of small things that we learn and share in a casual and offhand manner which may have significant impact on someone else. Here’s what Armano has to say to those who get too focused on defining “value.”

Value, is subjective—but the way we respond to it isn’t. We save things of value, we recommend them to others, sometimes we can’t even put a price on it.  When it’s unexpected, it’s even better.

I try to provide unexpected value by writing on this blog and trying to stay focused on useful things you can do to improve your business. I also try to route ideas and thoughts to people who can use them in other ways. Watching interesting information sources, putting it all in context and then disseminating it is something we all can do to provide unexpected value all the time.

Becoming a social media believer

Next up on the Armano-train is his graphic + essay on the Social Media Conversion Scale. It describes the phases people go through as they adopt social media. For anyone just getting started, it’s good to see what you’ll go through. It also helps you understand the people who are pushing some new technology just a little too hard. Does this describe anyone you know?

“When becoming immersed so deeply in something, you begin to lose perspective on how things look from the outside—you become so intent on enlightening others that your zeal can actually turn them off creating un-belief.”

Luckily, he goes on to describe all the phases and helps you get through them and get on with your work.

The social media scale

An auxilliary graphic to the previous article, perhaps, the OMG-WTF spectrum is just a simple graphic. Once you’ve actually started to use social media, it might be worthwhile to look at this graphic and determine where you belong.

Blogging for community

Moving on from Armano’s conceptual work, let’s talk about blogging. Even though Twitter is all the rage (follow me) and Facebook is very sexy, your blog is probably your best and most important hub in a social media strategy. You can talk and chatter all day long using various tools and networks but sooner or later you’re going to want to bring people home. Your blog is that home. Chris Brogan has 27 tips for blogging that help you get the most out of your blog.

A tool to consolidate to your social media presence

I was fortunate enough to have lunch one day at #ICNY with Jeff Turner, Stacey Harmon, Ines Hegedus-Garcia, Jay Thompson and Pat Kitano. During our conversation the topic of where to keep all these different fragments of our online content together. Once you have a LinkedIn profile, Twitter stream, blog, Facebook profile and on and on. And ongoing. It can get far too distributed in a hurry. Jeff was very much in favor of a dot-info domain name. Some were in favor of using FriendFeed. I’m sort of into my Netvibes thing but not super-committed to it.

Someone who wasn’t at that lunch but I admire a great deal is Joseph Ferrara from Sellsius. He has an article about using Extendr (web 2.0 requires such poor spelling). Myself, I like the dot-info more. But I have the tools and skills necessary to do that sort of thing. Extendr might be a best option for those who don’t want to get muddled in web-hosting and DNS issues.