Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang, two of Social Media’s leading thinkers penned a post a few weeks back called “Social Search: Customers Influence Search Results Over Brands”

To which I say: NO KIDDING!

But this post isn’t about what they wrote…it’s spot on.

What it is about is a further warning and opportunity for all of us.

Since Twitter real-time search is now integrated into Bing and Google, what this means is that when your clients and customers search for your brand online, they won’t necessarily see your Ad Words or even your carefully crafted SEO first.

What they will (or might) see is how your customers are talking about you today.

Scary?

You betcha.

Have an off day and POW!…someone is turned off forever.

So, in the “we are afraid of social media because we don’t have control” battle, another sortie has been launched and you have even less control of your brand.

Or do you?

What this means, I think, is that you REALLY need to be listening to what people are saying. Monitoring the conversation and let Viktor Frankl be your brand manager.

And, of course, it means if you are Remarkable and you create Raving Fans who are talking about you…well, then that will be the first thing on the search results now.

Lesson: No sense in tearing your hair out or bemoaning the reality. It is here. Best to just accept it and adapt.