“Public calamity is a mighty leveler.”
—Edmund Burke

I’m over on the Delta Dental site looking to download a claim form and one of the first places I get to is the Claim Completion instructions page.

Which tells me I can download and print a claim form from their Web site.

Which I’m on.

Except the text telling me to download the form from the site doesn’t link to the page on the site where I can download the form.

Okay, to be fair: There doesn’t seem to be a page on the site that houses all the forms. In fact, there’s a widget on the right side of the very page on which this text appears — a widget that’s actually pretty easy to miss.

C’mon, Delta Dental: Would it be that tough to simply say: “You may download and print a claim form from the appropriate link on the right side of this page.”

Takeaway for marketers: The Web is about making things as easy as possible for your audience to get to the information they want and need. Be as clear and as explicit as you possibly can on every single page of your site.

Learning to drive.

Learning to fish.

Learning a new sport.

Buying beers.

Getting out of a warm bed.

Getting a tattoo on your face.

A great friendship.

A royal marrying a commoner.

A mullet.

Exercise.

Dating.

Sex in high school.

Porn.

Alrighty, then.

Take a look at any given day’s headlines in the world of social media, search engine optimization and online marketing and you’ll see plenty of stories like these:

Google Changes How Twitter Appears In Search Results

Google’s Algorithm Tweaks Pushed Down “Two-Thirds” of Yahoo’s Contributor Content

10 Tips For Marketing On Redesigned Facebook

Are you sensing a theme yet? As Isaac Asimov famously said (though I doubt he was the first): “The only constant is change.”

Which creates quite the problem for online marketers and communicators, not to mention the clients and businesses for whom we all work.

Because a blog post like this one comes along that describes the essentials of integrating SEO and social media and it seems to provide a solid strategic roadmap. But then Google changes its algorithm. Or Facebook changes its layout. Or Twitter adds a new feature. Or some other change is made to one of the online giants that affects everyone’s online content, and those essentials wind up changing in one way or another, sometimes fundamentally.

Here’s the thing: Those changes happen all the time. And here’s the other thing: You can spend all your time planning and conniving and strategizing and positioning to try and beat the system and outrun your competitors — and no matter what you do or how much time and money you spend, you’ll never master the system to such a degree that you can claim to have a command of all the moving parts and elements of online communication better than anyone else out there.

Look at it this way: Absolute and unequivocal mastery of knowing exactly and precisely what to do to in the world of online communications is the carrot at the end of the stick that’s attached to your head, and the stick is about a foot longer than your arm. The reality is that you’ll never be able to grab it, no matter how hard and how long you try.

So where does this leave us all?

With the best strategy there is: Concentrate on the basics. Develop a solid message. Engage in great customer service. Provide valuable content. You know the drill.

Which do you think deserves your limited resources: Delivering valuable content for your Web site, or trying to optimize the content and frequency of your Twitter feed so that you show up a space or two higher in the Google Realtime search results for specifically optimized keywords that may or may not be relevant a week from now?

Because when you’re chasing trends and trying to grab carrots, you’re wasting a lot of equity that could otherwise go toward serving your customers and building your business … goals that are actually attainable.

Takeaway for marketers: Forget the carrot; as tempting as it is, you’ll never catch it. Assuming you plan on being in business for the long run, focus on developing and maintaining solid marketing communications fundamentals.

Newsweek explains why.