Guest post by Catherine Novak.

I was visiting the website of one of my closest childhood friends earlier today.  It’s a sweet little non-commercial project, which she has put together for family and friends (and for that reason alone, I’m not going to provide a link to it – sorry!)  I looked through the site, which she designed and developed herself, and marvelled at the nice photo interface she used to show off her new home and all the work that’s been done on it.  “Sweet!” I thought, “I’m going to scroll down and leave a comment”.  Wouldn’t you know it, there was nowhere to do so.  Not a blog post or page in sight.  In fact, she didn’t even have a Contact Us page… good thing she’s not planning to use this domain for business!

I was stunned – not only because she didn’t use a blog to post the progress of her home renovations, but also because it shows how much our use of the Internet has changed.  “Brochure” websites are an endangered species.  It’s now a given that if you have a website, there will probably be a blog attached to it somewhere. Or  – if you don’t want to blog, you’ll probably share your Twitter name and embed your latest tweets on your home page.  Your Contact Us page and your email signature will likely invite people to become your friend (or fan) on Facebook or to connect on LinkedIn.   And those places will link back in turn to your website.  Static pages used to be the norm, and they are becoming the exception.

This evolution is taking place in part because search engines prefer dynamic, fresh content. They also prefer pages with high traffic.  Add those things together, and you are more likely to find some business’s Twitter account on the first page of Bing or Google than you are their actual website- particularly if they haven’t done much in the way of online marketing or search engine optimization.

But more to the point – search engines prefer dynamic fresh content because PEOPLE prefer a site they can interact with.  In October 2008 – eons ago in this latest evolution of the Internet, social media users made up 60% of Americans.  (This year, over 2/3 of Canadians use social media).  Here’s what they told Cone, Inc. about business and social media:

“According to the survey, 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.
“The news here is that Americans are eager to deepen their brand relationships through social media,” explains Mike Hollywood, director of new media for Cone, “it isn’t an intrusion into their lives, but rather a welcome channel for discussion.”

The internet is a much more personal and interactive medium than the print and broadcast media that have come before it.  It’s an incredibly powerful medium that now allows us to communicate on a person-to-person level with a multitude of others – we’ve got the bandwidth to do it, and now we have a plethora of tools as well that make multi-directional communication an everyday occurence.

Are you using those tools?

Catherine Novak is owner of Wordspring, which teaches individuals and businesses how to use social media effectively.  She is also head of sales and social media for IdeaZone.ca, a leading web design and marketing firm in Victoria BC.  She and Paul Holmes of IdeaZone.ca founded the Social Media Club – Victoria Chapter, earlier this year.