Fish Where the Fish Are
To the best of my knowledge, the phrase “Fish Where the Fish Are” was first introduced to search engine marketing several years ago to promote text ads on the Looksmart search engine. No doubt, however, it was used by local fishermen long before that.
While it still rings true for fishermen, the Looksmart application never made any sense in the first place. What Looksmart seemed to overlook was the fact that most of the “fish” never used Looksmart so, as a result, could never be reached by placing text adds there.
The next logical question, therefore, is where do you find the fish now? The obvious answers, of course are Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. According to MarketProfs, the number of Facebook users reached 350 million in 2009, and while the number of MySpace users seems to be on the decline, Twitter may be heading in that direction as well.
So, if the fish are on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, the logical conclusion would be for a company to use them as opposed to starting their own social network.
A new genre of websites, however, that combine social media and small business profiles is now upon us.
The primary examples are small business communities such as VISA Business Network, AMX Open Forum,and ATT Insite.
Maybe these aren’t exactly where the fish are right now, but look for them to grow their small business memberships substantially in 2010; keep in mind that AT&T almost always wins; and if nothing else, you’ll be creating high-quality back-links to your website when you set up your business profile on the small business networks.
