Social Media Marketing Doesn’t Replace SEO - Looking at the latest search marketing conference agendas, articles, and online news in the SEM space, it certainly appears that social media marketing and networking are the wave of the future.

To a certain extent, they are.

Social media, and social networking in particular, create a back-and-forth conversation with your target audience, so you can virally market your website through the “buzz” that can be created. When something interesting, cool, or unique is being talked about in “all the right places,” it can certainly provide a boost in website traffic.

We search marketers tend to hang out in numerous online and offline communities where it’s easy to promote our own products and services, yet I can’t help wondering if our view of Web marketing is skewed because of this.

Are potential B2B clients and even B2C customers spending time at Digg? Do they attend SEM conferences in order to hire a company, or are they just trying to learn to do it themselves? And what about other industries? Is there a Sphinn equivalent for developers of product lifecycle management software? Are there groups of people online comparing the various brands of auto parts? Are there really people seeking out articles on these topics?

Perhaps.

And if so, we’d be remiss not to promote our clients’ websites in those spaces. But is this search marketing? Or is it simply online marketing? Arguably, it becomes search marketing when it increases link popularity, but surely that should be the secondary goal of this type of marketing campaign. True link popularity comes from having something worth linking to, not something you’ve asked your insulated group of cronies to link to.

Certainly, the boost in direct traffic that a site can gain when it is being discussed in all the right places online is not to be taken lightly – and that alone is reason enough to try to be found in all the right places. Yet how much of that traffic actually converts into anything good, and how much does it help your organic search rankings?

More important – how does it increase your bottom line? - For instance, I’ve written a few articles that received upward of 1,000 visitors a day from StumbleUpon alone. The spike in traffic was nice, and the slight increase in newsletter subscribers was certainly welcome, but for the most part, those StumbleUpon visitors spent just a few minutes on our site, and only a small percentage signed up for our free newsletter. None of them were interested in using our services. They read the article and then stumbled their way to the next site of potential interest.

Isn’t participation in social media really just preaching to the choir? - You reach your peers, not the people who will buy your product or service. Sure, it’s a nice ego stroke to have others in your industry tell you how cool you are, and there’s something to be said for building credibility within your own community. I’m certainly not knocking that, and have built my own credibility via various online communities in which I’ve participated over the past decade.

But how does it sell your products and services? - Do you gain customers and sales from your social media marketing and/or your participation in social networks? Does it increase your rankings for the keyword phrases your actual target audience is typing into the search engines? If your business model depends on traffic for traffic’s sake, or on how many ad impressions your site generates, then there’s an obvious value. But if you sell a product or a service – then not so much.

My fear with all the hype about social media marketing is that people new to search marketing will believe it’s what SEO demands and what SEO is all about.

It isn’t. Not by a long shot.

Social media marketing is a great addition to any traditional SEO work that you do, but it’s not a substitute. It’s more akin to hiring a PR firm once you’ve launched your already-SEO’d website. On-page SEO is definitely not as sexy as social media marketing, but it is still the most important investment in your website that you can make. Period.

So, go to all your social media conferences, and Digg your way to increased traffic. But first learn exactly who your target audience is, what they’re searching for in the search engines, and how your website can solve their problems. Then make sure your website does exactly that. All the social media buzz and traffic won’t amount to anything if your target audience isn’t already part of the online conversation.

Be sure to have your own house in order before you give social media marketing a try.

And don’t be surprised if it doesn’t actually provide you with the ROI you hoped it would. In most cases it will depend on who your target audience is, where they hang out, the types of services or products you offer, and whether your website truly provides people with what they’re looking for.

Getting back to SEO basics ... that is, creating a crawler-friendly website that is built around the keyword phrases people use at the search engines to find what you offer ... is the first and most important thing you can do for your website and your business. Yeah, it’s not as fun and exciting as social media marketing, but skip this step at your own peril!

* courtesy of [ Jill Whalen ]

Good tips and Great thread.Social Media is a better tool for getting to know your customer and strengthen that relationship that it is a hard sales tool.Social media is now increasingly used to not only project marketing influence,but also to collect important demographic and consumer data based on interactions that occur across the various platforms.

* SEO and SMO both are considered great to drive traffic to website; respectively they generate substantial leads to businesses.

* SMO is taken as a wonderful tool when it comes to impressing human beings. In SMO impressive contents play the major role while in SEO keywords do all the magic.

* Most importantly, SMO and SEO Services both are beneficial for each other, as SMO offers back linking and linking to the website, which is an important part of Search Engine Optimization.

Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.

Social Media Marketing is an easy way to have a real audience. Global companies have recognized it as one of the best marketing platform potential and exploiting the innovation of advertising in social media marketing.

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Social media sites is one of the best host to promote your site to world, now a days mostly SEO companies are using social media site support to promote her site, This article is really cool for that.

thnks for sharing information about SSM

Its a specific online marketing strategy based on utilization of online social media sites ie Twitter, Digg, YouTube, StumbleUpon, etc...

combination of SEO and SMO are good practice, the more techniques the better for your site

Social Media Marketing is the process of marketing through social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. By leveraging the social aspect of social media marketing online is able to communicate and interact on a much more personal and more dynamic than traditional marketing.

Social media marketing is an online marketing strategy that utilizes social networks such as Twitter or Facebook and blogs.In today's world, social networking is extremely successful and social media marketing is very important to a business because of the sheer number of people that access these sites regularly.

Social media marketing is an online marketing strategy that utilizes social networks such as Twitter or Facebook and blogs.

but now the most trending social network is Facebook...