EQUTE — Everyone is chomping at the bit to dominate the social networks, but in reality, it shouldn’t be the number one priority for online advertisers.

The number one thing marketers should know about social media users is that they are fickle. The more time and work you put into social media doesn’t mean results. While a new Nielson report shows that people are finding more and more content from social networks, it may not work for you or your client.

Search engine optimization, however, always means results. It’s more work, it takes longer and there are a lot of factors involved in ranking number one, but it’s work ten times any re-Tweet or Facebook fan.

Well duh, right?

Yeah, this is no secret, but marketers aren’t the only people hearing about social media 500 times a day. Your clients are going to ask about and ask for social media help. But marketers need to know when to say “no.” Sure, you can show them a big page of all their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn profiles and say “look what I can do!” And they will look at it for a little while then figure out that it hasn’t helped them make a sale.

Don’t be afraid to say, “why don’t you spend an hour and do it yourself while I make you some money.” OK, maybe not in those words, but you have to help them realize that that is not where the priority lies.

Tell them making the best of their online ad dollars means time, have a case study ready and show them how SEO helps over social media. Demonstrable results are the marketer’s friend, your site will thank you, your clients will thank you and your time (and their money) will be well spent.

EQUTE — Judging when your key search terms will come up just got a lot easier with Google Insights.

Google has gotten into the prognostication business with its new Trends tool. They have a quite exhaustive research paper on the topic for anyone who really likes math and graphs. But it boils down to Google using past results and search patterns to determine what people will be searching for in the coming months and years.

Marketers can use the tool as a good way to see what kind of keywords and ads they want to run in the future. For example, pretend we have a Minnesota gardening company staffed with gardeners and stocked with all the gardening tools for a hobbyist.

Google Insights Graph

With Google Insight, it’s easy to see that gardening searches skyrockets in April — one doesn’t even need Google to tell them people are interested in gardening in the spring, but what Insights does well is tell us how the searches have changed. Sure gardening searches will jump in April, but Insights can give us insight into what marketers should be targeting with their articles, keywords and ads.

Google Insights Graph

For instance, this graph shows the search results for gardener. While it’s a subset of gardening and a key part of that gardening business, it seems the grim economy has more people doing their gardening on their own. But insight also gives nice related searches below, vegetable gardening, for example, is up 110 percent from the same time last year and flower gardening has dropped somewhat.

Google Insights Graph

This is where Insight needs some real knowledge to back it up since it’s formula doesn’t factor in other societal issues such as the bad economy. Perhaps Google is predicting the economy will bounce back in 2010 and people will give up on their victory gardens. That’s unlikely, but it still shows when growing veggies will be a popular thing to search for.

All this can really help bring customers to the store or to the Web site efficiently. Marketers can tone down their gardening adds in the winter and get their SEO friendly articles ready for next season. Especially in a down economy, it’s crucial to get some baring on where search will be going. Businesses can tailor their entire business plan to fall in line with how people will soon behave.

For instance, the gardening company could put out articles offering vegetable gardening tips instead of flower gardening tips and put off hiring new gardeners or serve ads that offer the cheapest gardening.

Maybe the gardening shop can serve ads offering a class taught by those gardeners with nothing to do. A “grow your own veggies class” at the store could burn up the local search ads and bring people to the store.

While it’s not a be-all-end all forecasting tool, Google Insight does give a good visual representation of how search volumes will stack up in the future, giving physical stores and online advertisers another piece of their game plan.