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.

Search marketing has evolved into a finely honed science for marketers. Bid optimization, creative optimization, keyword expansion, targeting, and match types are all managed with an unblinking focus on the direct-response goals of the funnel, leading from clicks to conversions. Technology platforms make it possible for marketers to pull levers and make adjustments in real time to react to changing promotions and market conditions for always-optimized media. Consequently, search marketing has largely been the domain of performance-based marketers.

Every day consumers are sharing more online. Currently consumers share four billion updates, conversations, recommendations, photos, videos, tweets, posts, shares on Facebook, 200 million on Twitter and one billion on Google+ per day. This shift in consumer online behavior is the catalyst behind the ongoing changes in search engine algorithms we've seen over the past year, in which Google and Bing have updated algorithms to incorporate consumer-generated content into search engine result placement.

I was at SXSW in Austin this last week -- and like anyone who's ever attended this festival of tech glitterati, one can't help feel a rejuvenation of hope for a better future. The sheer invention and ingenuity on display literally at every turn is truly something to behold.