SEO Or Social Marketing: Which Is Better?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 9 of October , 2007 at 8:44 am

This question pops up often: Which is better, SEO or Social Marketing?

Well, I say, define better.

It is hard to imagine doing any kind of Internet marketing without SEO. The Web, essentially, has been built on it. In 1995, it wasn’t called SEO, but people were building websites and getting them indexed according to keywords on their web pages and meta tags. From there, the developments came and eventually Google introduced link quality and relevance. SEO is free and relatively easy to understand, though it is hard work. I wouldn’t ignore it.

But don’t think that just because SEO is the natural platform for the Internet that social marketing isn’t necessary. In the same way that the Web was built on SEO, it was also built on social media. What I mean is, the Internet is intrinsically social. It always has been.

Websites don’t exist in a vacuum. There have always been communities online where people could gather, communicate, and get to know each other. The specific media have changed over time. But it’s always been available. Forums, for instance, have been around for a long time - forever and day, it seems. Online Web communities like Geocities and Angelfire allowed people to build free websites and network through those communities. Today, people do virtually the same thing through social sites like MySpace and Facebook.

So I would say build your Internet marketing plan around both of these necessities. Just as you cannot market your business online with SEO, you can’t market yourself without social marketing either. You need both to truly succeed.

Category: SEO, Social & Viral Marketing

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg

No comments yet.