Search and Social Media. Brands No Longer Own Their Brand. We Do.

In the social web, you don’t control your own message, your customers do. Those of us in the social network world know this, however more traditional brands can be a bit slow to adopt this ideology. However, 360i has put together some amazing data that might convince them that this is indeed the case.

In the 360i’s November whitepaper, which looks at the landscape of natural search, 360i shows that a majority of social media search listings that appear for brand-related search queries are created not by the brand themselves, but fans, customers and “haters” of that brand. According the report, “77% of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook listings that appeared for brand searches were controlled by a party other than the marketer.”

This data clearly creates a legitimate reason for brands to be proactive with their social media presence. Period. If they aren’t engaging in social media, then they will at the will of the people who love or hate them. They need to be in the trenches interacting and potentially diffusing bad press.

360i also recommends that brands “cross-link owned domains and social media destinations. This creates a search ecosystem that will allow PageRank, domain history and strength to permeate.”

Grab the document, it’s 18 pages of pure social media and search awesome sauce.