SEO and social media marketing: Yin and Yang.
Image courtesy of engageinpr.com
In my last post, I suggested that despite the energy surrounding online marketing today, traditional marketing/advertising goals still apply:
- Marketers want to stand out from the crowd
- Marketers want to generate word-of-mouth advertising
Today, the two "hot" online methods for achieving these goals are Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media promotion (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc.). They come at the visibility and relationships issues from two very different ways and many experts believe that one is better than the other for generating online traffic. But a growing number of observers believe they are the "yin and yang" of online marketing and can support each other to drive search engine rankings and consumer relationships.
Search Engine Optimization -- the yin
SEO is a process for maximizing traffic to web pages or web sites through natural search results (vs. paid search listings). It tries to make a web site visible in search rankings through a combination of web site content and construction plus the art of including just the right keywords that people are likely to search for. SEO strategies and tactics are typically pretty passive - on the order of, "If you build it, (and build it right) they will come."
Social media marketing -- the yang
Social media marketing and promotion, on the other hand, provides marketers with an active way to make themselves visible to consumers. It promotes web site and/or blog content (and therefore page views) through reaching out to selected online communities, contributing a point of view and inviting people to "link back" to relevant/useful content. As links are built within the community, the content draws more traffic and search rankings improve. Social media strategies and tactics are typically labor-intensive (gotta write those blogs and wall entries) and can be time-consuming because they are founded on networking and building relationships.
SEO and social media go better together
So, is one better than another? If we look at the two goals a marketer wants to achieve, it seems clear that neither SEO nor social marketing is going to do the job alone. Good SEO may help marketers' web sites climb the search rankings ladder. However, SEO alone won't generate visitor engagement and desired word-of-mouth advertising. Social media marketing can engage visitors and generate "fans" who are willing to "talk up" a brand or product or service. However, it's still rare for social media marketing alone to generate a groundswell of interest or traffic that drives non-optimized web sites or blogs to the top of search ranking pages.
Taken together, however, SEO and social media marketing seem to be perfect partners - with web sites that are built to be easy to search for and find, with an online connection to a virtual community who is engaged in responding to, linking to and creating relevant content. Together, SEO and social media marketing can build a substantial online presence that plays a key role in supporting a company's overall marketing and sales efforts.
Obviously, both SEO and social media marketing have their own best practices. In future articles, I'll be taking a look at some of these best practices and linking to some real expert advice that can help you drive your online marketing results.
Online marketing glossary terms:
Cost-per-click (CPC) - the cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through.
CPM - cost per thousand impressions. Cost Per Millie
Customer acquisition cost - the cost associated with acquiring a new customer.
Comments
I like this series of articles. Helps those of us who are not sure of terminology or trends.
Thanks for the comment, Ross! Not up with the experts yet, but hopefully it'll help the rest of us catch up.
Doing social media stuff for awhile now, don't think it's worth the time investment -- especially for twitter. Everyone of the type of clients I serve say they don't have the time to do that stuff.
i get the yin and yang parallel - SEO and SM work best together to generate traffic.... but the SEO as we know it today can stand on its own, while there is a dependency for SM to fuel SEO in order (for SM) to be successful.
Can you be more vague?
@Jeff "SEO is a process for maximizing traffic to web pages or web sites through natural search results (vs. paid search listings)." --> I have to disagree here... SEO is the process for maximizing RELEVANT traffic to web pages or sites... important distinction here. Any SEO plan that just guarantees "traffic" should be reconsidered.
"Social media marketing and promotion, on the other hand, provides marketers with an active way to make themselves visible to consumers." --> Going to disagree
I like the anology.
One point of small disagreement. SEO is not that passive. The hard (and most important) part about SEO is link building, which requires getting people to link to you. There's a variety of different approaches, but the more succesful approaches to link building require active engagement with other webmasters and bloggers.
I am quite agree with this post, but if you use SEO/SMO in right direction then there is no ways for yin.
iConnect Group Software
The yin/yang analogy IS simplistic. But to me it does set up (and differentiate) today's two primary tools for driving web site traffic. There are a lot of people who haven't picked up yet on either one. Does anyone have a better analogy or metaphor? Thanks, everyone for the comments!
@Catherine Social Media, if done right, can be worth the investment. There should be clearly defined goals when rolling out a Social Media campaign. Brand awareness? Leads? Direct response? Gauging consumer preferences? Sounds to me like your clients were interested in DR and weren't seeing it. Take a look at how Dell did $3MM on Twitter.
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