Social Media Marketing

Question by Ebay Powerseller: Can Social Media Marketing replace Search Engine Marketing as a viable way for companies to market online?
I "Stumbled Upon" www.FtheBigThree.com which does a good job of showing the opportunities that could be available for marketers in the "Social Media" category. Not completely sold yet on it but kinda warming up to it. I guess I'll have to start learning SMM to go along with my SEM and SEO. So, many abbreviations....so little time.

Best answer:

Answer by imisidro
NO --- they can work hand in hand, but social media marketing cannot replace search engine marketing

Search engine's usage is far way more than social media use. Plus traffic from search engines are more sustainable and longer term, while social media traffic is more sporadic.

If you get a top placement for a keyword in Google, for example, you can expect that to continuously give you traffic until someone else topples you from the top spot -- and that is not always easy to do unless you made a huge mistake or the search engines changed their algorithm.

You can get a huge burst of traffic from social media sites such as Digg -- only if your link is in the homepage. Once your link is pushed to the archives, traffic dries up.

Social media sites depend on the FRESHNESS of the information, while search engine sites depend on the RELEVANCE of the site to the search query and that gives an edge to older pages

For a savvy marketer, he/she needs to utilize and maximize both venues to get the most traffic. The two should work hand in hand, and not one over the other.

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