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.

If you’re in charge of a company or a brand’s Facebook presence, you’re probably getting hammered from all sides to post this item or that offer or some other somethingorother to the account.

“Post this discount: We really need to boost sales.”

“Post this news, our this-and-such department really needs to spread the word.”

You probably know the drill.

So here’s the one and only question you need ask yourself each and every time before clicking that “Share” button:

Is this something my customers want to know?

Answering that question means you have to step out of the company’s mindset and into the customer’s mindset. It also means that social media managers have an extremely unique position in the company: Not only do they have to protect the company’s interests and advance the company’s goals, they have to maintain the customers’ interest and keep the customer-audience growing.

Which means that any social media manager worth their pixels will be having a lot of discussions along the lines of: “I know this isn’t something that explicitly sells our product or disseminates our messaging or contains a call to action, but it’s something that will interest the audience we’ve amassed.”

As anyone who has been in the business world for more than about seven minutes can attest, the Venn diagram of company and customer interests is not a 100-percent overlap. Beyond the overlap, though, is where the social media manager needs to be prepared to wear many hats, including marketer, communicator, editor, consumer advocate, customer service representative, crisis manager and diplomat … for starters.

Takeaway for marketers: It ain’t just about posting a bunch of stuff to the Facebook Wall.

The Onion strikes again.

Takeaway for marketers: Yes, it’s important to focus on your most valuable customers. But don’t do so at the expense of everyone else.

I get a lot of email. I don’t mean a lot of email, I mean a LOT of email.

Part of it has to do with the fact that I have about a dozen email accounts, but right now I’d like to focus on one of them: the AOL account I’ve had since the early ’90s.

This is the catch-all account where I send all my subscriptions and newsletters and discussion group mailings. It’s the address I provide whenever I buy anything online. As a result, it’s where I get a lot of marketing-related email.

As I type this, there are 937 messages in this account’s inbox. That’s culled down from about 1,100 when I logged on this morning. How do I decide what to delete? I have several ways, but the main one is to search the subject lines for particular elements that tell me the email is worth deleting without reading.

Here’s my list of the top 10 things I search for when I’m trying to clean out my inbox:

1 — “%”
2 — “$”
3 — “!”
4 — “free”
5 — “Craig”
6 — “get”
7 — “offer”
8 — “save”
9 — “deal”
10 — “sale”

When I search for these elements in subject lines, 999 times out of 1,000 the email is a piece of junk I can delete without reading.

I don’t know how strongly my attitude is reflected in any given company’s mailing list of, say, 100,000 addresses. I do know this, though: In-my-face offers and fake “personalization” aren’t the things that make me interested in reading further.

Takeaway for marketers: I’m not saying you should never include these elements in your subject lines, but I am saying you should think about the rest of the messages in your recipients’ inboxes, not just yours. Which is yet another reason why A/B testing of subject lines is so important.

As you work on developing your offer for that next email blast you’re going to send, consider the context within which your offer will be seen.

I’m talking about your recipients’ inboxes, of course. Here’s a sample of some of the subject lines in mine this morning:

French Toast K-Cups are here & 10% off David Rio

15% off, $30 off, $50 off + more inside. Save BIG!

25% Off – Time is Running Out to Save

Save 40%: Buy 15 Tulips, Get 15 Free, just $29.99

Save 50% on Monster Jam This Weekend!

Sneak Peak (sic): Over 80% Off Teeth Whitening

85% Off a 30-Day Unlimited Semi-Private Personal Training Program

Save 10 percent, save 85 percent and save everything in between. The messages filter into inboxes by the dozens — indeed, by the hundreds. So yes, it’s a numbers game, but it’s more than that.

If you’re selling widgets, it’s not enough that you’re selling them at a price lower than all the other widget-selling companies. You need to think about all the other offers that are probably hammering the inbox of your customers — and act accordingly.

Takeaway for marketers: Is it about the offer … or the way that offer is communicated? That’s a key question to be considering that, according to the subject lines I’m seeing in my inbox, all too many companies are simply ignoring.