Is Search and Social Media Marketing Worth Your Investment?

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still a key long-term strategy to strengthen online visibility and improve reputation with major search engines (Google, Yahoo, & BING). But, getting results with SEO strategies alone could be a drawn-out process. Because of this, most businesses are adopting SEO in conjunction with one or more PPC & Social Media strategies, to improve online visibility in less time. Be sure to consult a professional or do your research, to evaluate whether these strategies are relevant for your business and then put a plan in place to execute these strategies.

PPC

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns are also known as Paid Search campaigns (Google Ads for Google, Bing Ads for Microsoft). PPC is an online search marketing strategy to bring traffic to websites when users enter relevant search terms. Unlike SEO, for PPC, the businesses pay search engines when their ad is clicked.

PPC is an aggressive online marketing strategy. Marketers can get intended results quickly using this strategy, but it can get expensive over a long time. When used properly with SEO, PPC can be a very effective search strategy. Most businesses use PPC as a short term or seasonal strategy.

SMO

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the use of websites and social media platforms to create and grow brand and/or business. In this process, marketers make a blog or web content shareable on Social Media channels like YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, etc. Content is optimized so that it is easily shared (socialized) by clients and fans to an even wider audience by providing share buttons to different Social Media platforms. The aim is to provide more visibility to website content using Social Networks.

SMM

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is improving the visibility of a business or brand on social media channels. All activities, paid and unpaid content, promoting products & services on Social Media contribute to SMM. In recent years SMM is a very popular marketing strategy since businesses can reach a large number of targeted audiences in a short time through viral videos and such!

History

A few years ago, social media was popular among individuals to interact and stay in touch with family and friends. The posts were mostly pics of their family members, vacations, Birthdays, and pets. It was not the norm for businesses to have fan pages and build their network online. So, businesses allocated their marketing dollars to paid-search marketing, such as Google Adwords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), to improve their rankings in organic search.

Search Engine Optimization is a long term strategy, for some businesses it took a lot longer than others, to achieve rankings in search engines, even after aggressive link building and content marketing strategies. This is not the case anymore since businesses now have the option of adopting social media strategies in their marketing plan, based on the proven results in the industry relevant to their business.

Current Trends

All these strategies (SEO, SMO, SMM, and PPC) play well together! None of these strategies have to be applied exclusively. These strategies complement each other and produce significantly better results, especially when used with other digital marketing strategies.

Now, businesses can allocate resources between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Optimization (SMO), Social Media Marketing, and achieve results in less time. By engaging in Social Media Optimization, it is now easier to adopt Social Media Marketing Strategies as well.

If you are a hands-off type of business and don’t have resources to manage Social Media profiles and engage in conversation with fans on a regular basis, SMO is the best option for you. Once you have an SMO strategy in place, if you have resources to manage the profiles on a regular basis and respond to fans in a timely manner, you can engage in meaningful Social Media Marketing activities.

Benefits

By executing both SEO, PPC, SMO & Social Media Marketing strategies effectively, you are leveraging the power of the internet to:

• Improve online visibility (both short-term and long-term)
• Strengthen brand awareness
• Build Credibility Online
• Build a strong following online
• Generate leads by viral marketing
• Be the source of information, when consumers are ready
• Create excitement about shopping online

You want to explore Digital Marketing options, but don’t know where to start? Please make an appointment and we’ll be happy to discuss :).

About the Author

Kalpana Murthy, President/CEO at WSI Plano, DBA Kriti Web Solutions, LLC. is a Digital Strategist, Consultant, Speaker/Trainer, & Software Engineer who is passionate about bringing affordable technology solutions to businesses to build online presence. Kalpana Murthy is a certified partner with Google, HubSpot, Sharp Spring, SEMRush and other digital solution providers.