Optimisation... Bah! Humbug!

So over the past few years, I have been hearing a lot about how search engine optimisation is important and how your blog, your Facebook page, your website and any other online identity that a business might have, needs to be optimised. They ask you to pump the page with keywords; provide cross-linkages; and all sorts of things.

We own about 4 different pages on Facebook and in most of the cases it took weeks before we reached 100 likes. Yesterday, we launched a new Facebook page, without keywords, without cross-linkages, without optimisation. We got 100 likes in the first hour of launching this page and within 12 hours have managed to reach 200 likes. All this has been made possible by network effect and not by any kind of optimisation.

We got a team of students together, who were passionate about the idea and wished to push it. We launched the page along with them yesterday night and the response has been unprecedented for us. We had prepared ourselves to go all out through all of our networks and generate interest in the page. We did not want to spend any money on doing this, neither did we want to get hits through search pick-up. We needed focussed individuals who were perfect target for the page to arrive at the page and there is no better way to ensure that than the word of mouth.

The results that we have been able to achieve is a clear sign of the importance of having a strong network and having the ability to leverage it. Provided that you are able to do a good enough job with what you set out to do, that leverage will continue to grow over time. So instead of spending a great deal of time attempting to optimise and perfect keywords, if you spend your time building a good network of individuals and leveraging them; you can be far more certain of getting better results!