[Originally written on 18 February 2014]

Social Media is always evolving. Always.  Search Marketing not as much.

If it wasn’t for the Google Panda roll-out in 2011 and the Penguin update on 24 April 2012, search engine marketing would probably still be done the way it has been done since websites were just grey backgrounds, text, and images held together by rudimentary lines of HTML code – viewed in the Netscape browser. So the game of trying to get to the top of Google’s SERPs has changed quite a bit. There’s been a few updates made annually since then. So it looks like Google algorithm updates are here to stay.

In his “Whiteboard Friday” video of 7 August 2013, Rand Fishkin, the founder and former CEO of SEO consultancy MOZ, spoke about the difference between link-building (a search marketing tactic) and content marketing (the creation and distribution of engaging consumable content in a variety of forms). The conclusion of his talk was that whilst content marketing achieves results over a longer period than link-building, it is the better option to achieve sustainable marketing outcomes.

Since watching the video last Friday I have done a lot of thinking about what Rand said in the video and even went so far as to put forward a little hypothesis of my own: “Social media marketing can achieve the same marketing outcomes as search marketing, however, search marketing cannot achieve the same outcomes as social media marketing can.”

Let’s look at search marketing as we know it (who knows it might evolve drastically someday). To do search marketing well you need to do only two things:
• The first thing you need to get right is your on-page optimization.
• The second thing you need to get right is your off-page optimization, which hinges largely on having links on other websites that point to yours.

For search marketing to be successful, you need loads of links related to specific keywords that point to your website, regardless of where those links are. It could be on PR portals, social networks, online directories or forums, and blog comments. This will then drive traffic to your website as long as you keep creating keyword-specific links off-page. Coupled with great user experience and on-page conversion logistics, you should be OK.

Social media, on the other hand, necessitates that you do a few things, and these include:

• Creating a well-populated, linked “social profile”.
• Connect with people online on a one-to-one and one-to-many basis.
• Amass followers for your brand which normally evolves into a community.
• Create content in a variety of formats (print, video, blog posts, e-docs, photos, audio).
• Distribute all the content you create on various platforms.
• Link to these pieces of content from other networks and platforms or on websites/blogs

Over time you will have all these information-rich social profiles, content on all the social networks and platforms, contacts on all the social networks, and cross-pollination of this content. This will create a keyword-rich, well–linked network of information that will all end up in the results pages of search engines. The exception being social networks with “closed ecosystems” (like how you cannot pin to Pinterest from Facebook).

On the face of it, one would say they actually achieve the same objective, but that is not completely true, for several reasons:

• Search marketing builds information links, not people-centred linkages and genuine human connections.
• In search marketing, the content is purposed for link-building only, whereas with social media marketing content is created and distributed to attract and convert without visiting the website first.
• Search marketing aims to drive traffic to the website to achieve the ultimate marketing objective (sale, membership etc). Social media can achieve that objective right on the social platform.
• Search marketing does not build communities. Social media builds communities that become captive audiences for future brand messages and brand-centred engagement.
• Whilst search marketing can only be measured for ROI at the website itself, social media enables measurement and monitoring right on the social platform.
• Search marketing is inhuman despite its effectiveness in driving traffic. Social media marketing is built on genuine human connections that last.

So from the above, we can see that whilst search marketing is very effective in driving traffic, it cannot achieve many of the things that a social network can. Social networks on the other hand, though slower, also drive traffic and supply an endless sea of links that end up driving traffic to the desired online destination as well. The social network also acts as an outpost of the website enabling the CALL TO ACTION to be acted on without visiting the website. This is not possible with search marketing.

So you see.  Search engine marketing – though necessary for effective online marketing – cannot achieve many of the marketing goals that we can achieve when using social networks as marketing tools.

Social networks, on the other hand, tower over search marketing like a giant in that it can give you everything a good search campaign can (less the speed ) and more.

What do you think about the above? Is social really sexier than search?