We're all familiar with the adage "actions speak louder than words." It underscores the premise that, despite what people may tell you about themselves and their preferences, their actions will often differ. In the book "Consumer.ology," author Philip Graves explores this phenomenon in the context of consumer behavior patterns. Graves believes that focus groups and questionnaires can lead to faulty data, which in turn can lead to poor product development and/or market receptivity to a new product or service.

I was asked an interesting question by a client the other day: "What is the minimum spending threshold for paid search? Below what level does it not make sense to invest anything?" The answer, of course, is that there is no minimum when it comes to paid search. Each click you buy generates a potential lead. But the reasoning behind that answer speaks to the unique nature of search, when compared to traditional brand-building channels.

Every day in nature, avalanches both big and small occur, in areas so unreachable and remote that humans never see them. In the world of real-time publishing, avalanches of traffic, shares, links, and social signals also occur every day, both large and small in scope, but they have a highly beneficial impact on publishing efforts. These opportunities for massive attention are largely being missed by content marketers, at least in the participatory publishing sense, and marketers need only open their eyes to see them.

Transmedia marketing, in which a story is told across a variety of platforms that can include film, television, the Internet, live events and social media, among others, is being used more widely, particularly in the entertainment industry. It's one more way that content marketing, which is a primary driver in search engine optimization, is being leveraged not only to get better SEO, but to drive search queries in the first place.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to keynote at an annual gathering of welding equipment manufacturers. The topic? Social media, which had emerged as the number one thing these industrial marketers wanted to learn more about during their previous conference. Now, if that image introduces some cognitive dissonance, you're not alone. Anyone I mentioned this to tended to raise an eyebrow and look at me with skepticism.

In my last column, I dropped Searchery Rhymes/For bedtimes to go smooth without a peep./Today, I got some harder core prose/ For search pros after the kiddies are asleep.

Schema.org is a shared vocabulary of semantic markup language (or structured data), similar to other languages before, such as RDFa and microformats. Schema uses the microdata markup language. While RDFa and microformats both work fine for Google, Google does recommend using the microdata markup found in Schema.

When I was at SXSWi, I got to see Guy Kawasaki interview Google's Vic Gundotra, who's responsible for Google+ -- Google's comprehensive new social layer that integrates all of Google's disparate services. Kawasaki, who helped bring the Macintosh computer to market when he worked at (as it was called then) Apple Computer, said Google+ is as much of a game change as the first Mac was back in the day.

Whether brands are ready or not, Timeline is rolling out to all Pages in two weeks' time. The introduction of Timeline is the most significant new feature set Facebook has ever presented to Page owners. It's more significant than both Open Graph Apps and Premium ads (the subjects of my two previous installments in this series); more significant than even the EdgeRank algorithm. Timeline is poised to change the way that brands approach social engagement with their audiences.

We live in an amazing, amazing world, and it's wasted on the crappiest generation of spoiled idiots." -- Louis CK If you want to see "amazing" as it emerges onto our collective radar, your best seat is in front of the TED stage. It's like a candy store of jaw-dropping technology. This year's edition was no exception. We saw flying robots, virtual cadavers (to train new surgeons) and enough other techno-goodies to keep the TED audience in a digitally enhanced state of rapture.