When it comes to online marketing and choosing strategies that will grow your business, the never-ending debate seems to be between SEO and Social Media marketing.
SEO vs SMM – Which is the better option?
While SEO (search engine optimization) is all about showing up first on search engine results, social media marketing (SMM) is more focused on building brand awareness and an engaging relationship with your audience. Businesses often hire either SEO and SMM experts to increase visibility not realizing the benefits each of them bring to the table.
As an experienced agency, North Rose Technologies has a dedicated team equipped to take on SEO as well as Social media marketing. We understand the working and importance of each, providing you with a strategy that works best for your business. However, before we get into which is better, it is important to understand them independently.
Let’s compare both based on:
Target Audience
When carrying out a marketing campaign of any kind, it is important to break your target audience into a specific group – especially if you want to bring in traffic and generate sales. Social media does make it easier to target a specific audience as these platforms allow you to create ads that will target people in a demographic based on your niche. SEO on the other hand is not as targeted. While you can definitely target audiences interested in your niche, you cannot target a specific demographic.
Time Investment
Marketing of any kind requires a ton of effort and time investment from your end. However, it is important to ensure a return on the investment you are putting in and how much is actually worth it. Should you put in more effort with social media or SEO? When it comes to social media, you need to have to plan and post regularly across different platforms. There are tons of tools available to make scheduling easier, however, it still does require high commitment when it comes to developing a content strategy. Social media marketing is not something that you can rely on to work without any consistent efforts. Posts tend to have a social shelf life which is why you need to post more frequently and also engage with your followers for a wider reach. SEO, on the other hand, while a little slower to generate results, but once you start ranking high on search engines, most of your marketing work gets reduced.
Content
Be it SEO or social media marketing, content needs to be created for both. The type of content you create impacts the traffic to your website and how your audience will engage with it. When it comes to SEO and driving traffic to your website, relevant long-form content works best. Articles of around 1500 words usually do the trick, however, you may not need to post as much as you would on social media. Captivating images and short videos tend to work best for social media platforms. Such content is likely to resonate with the audience and be shared by them, which increases awareness of your business.
You might be interested in “Effective Social Media Strategy for Your Small Business“
In Conclusion
There are several benefits to incorporating both SEO and social media marketing strategies into your online marketing efforts. To get the best results, your campaigns should include a healthy balance of both – depending on what it is your business stands for and your goals. While just writing long articles or only posting videos may not do much individually, together they can be a force to be reckoned with. Doing this not only increases engagement and the time spent on your website, but it also shows the search engines that your content is reliable and therefore puts you higher in the rankings. Search engines often use social media as a ranking factor, so it is definitely worth building your social media presence as both are interlinked. While SEO and social media marketing use different approaches, they each help the other. In the end, they both have the same goal – you make your business stand out and generate sales.
