When I took my kids to see Transformers (loud clanging metal – ugh!) this weekend, I searched for “what movie should i see” and began an online interaction (ended up seeing The Proposal). Later on I might write a blog post about the movie and how to recruit in Alaska. If such interactions are not social, what are they? If they lead to increased hits to my website, why isn’t that SEO?

Those who confine SEO to a narrow set of technical skills like keyword analysis and link-building are missing out on all the fun.

Let’s keep things simple. For something to be social, there needs to be an actual interaction between two or more people. SEO and SEM simply is a different beast, and the logic linking this kind of marketing to social interactions seems a bit tortured to me.

Interestingly, it does not appear that Google themselves believe that search in its present state is social. Check out this interview with Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Product and User Experience at http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/31/googles-marissa-mayer-social-search-is-the-future/

There’s a lot of great stuff there, but here’s a part of it:

“VentureBeat: How would you describe social search?

Marissa Mayer: We believe social search is any search aided by a social interaction or a social connection… Social search happens every day. When you ask a friend “what movies are good to go see?” or “where should we go to dinner?”, you are doing a verbal social search. You’re trying to leverage that social connection to try and get a piece of information that would be better than what you’d come up with on your own.

We know that because of the volume of searches like this that happen everyday, that the social component of search is actually very important, and it hasn’t translated well yet to the internet medium.

Social search is hard because the intuitive thing you would do online to mirror normal social networks and other social interactions just aren’t that effective, compelling or even reasonable. So, for example, from the Facebook News Feed analogy, you could just get a social network and broadcast all of everyone’s searches to everyone on their social network, but most people view search as a far more private activity than that. They’re not comfortable letting everyone in their social network know what they searched for, so such a product is clearly not reasonable.”

Social search is clearly on the way (Marissa’s quote was from before the Twitter breakout), but I do not believe that this is at all what Doug was referring to in this post.

Arguments can be had on both sides, personally my social approach to recruiting involves an expanded view of what social media is, for me it includes search. Yes, I’m a jobs2web customer. Yes, I’m a friend of Doug Berg’s. I’d have the same perspective regardless.

SEO is a more stable tool to focus on because it offers long term(reasonably) success…if done properly.

This article actually makes me want to jump out of my chair, becuause I believe my company’s platform ((www.groupereye.com/launchprogram) will be every firm’s interactive recruiting strategy.

You mentioned a paralyzing fear around brand and reputation is stopping progression in organizations moving forward with 2.0 recruiting. I think Susan Burns just posted a great article to get over that on her Talent Synch blog.

It’s interesting that google had such a response. Have you heard of google wave? Do you think that could help? Jeff Shwartzman’s blog on ERE had article about that not too long ago.

Perhaps Doug just appreciates the popularity of your event and he found a way to indirectly push his own product(s)? :)

When I developed the initial concept and program for the Summit, the idea that Social Media “will solve every employer’s recruiting problems” never crossed my mind, and it was certainly not a theme for the event. No tool works in every situation, and only a fool would claim that it does.

The idea behind the Summit was to explore how Social Media tools are being used, show real world examples from companies using them, and stimulate new ideas and conversations within the profession.

Did the Summit focus on this niche to the exclusion of all else? Of course. This was not a generalist event, and it did exactly what it said it would do.

Search is effective, and it’s an important tool that should be in every recruiter’s arsenal, but there is nothing social about it.