Social Media Marketing - Are you evolving from SEO?

I was going to write about conversion tactics in this post, but a post over on The ClickZ Network by Mike Grehan has focused my attention on where online businesses should be focusing their marketing budgets for the foreseeable future.

Increasingly, search engines are attempting to provide users with more varied and informative media in their search engine results pages (SERPS). No longer do you just get the usual list of static website pages. These days you are increasingly likely to get images, videos, news feeds, directory listings, and social media websites all vying for space on the SERP.

Universal Search is changing the way people are finding new resources on the web. Sticking to the tried and trusted methods of SEO is an increasingly less effective method for increasing online visibility and thus leads. SEO still has a place at the online marketing strategy table, but more powerful strategies are gathering momentum in the wave of social media sites.

So, what should be part of the new web marketing strategy for 2008? What’s at the core of the new approach? Well, its the marketing side of search. SEO is the technical side. (It may be argued that SEO also has certain nuances that impact on conversion/marketing, but strictly speaking its a technical discipline and maybe this is why traditional marketing enterprises have been slow to integrate with it.)

So, you start with SEO, then what else should you be adding to the mix. Well, collectively I would call it the Social Media Marketing (SMM) mix and its consists of:

1. Media Elements
2. Web 2.0 website focus
3. Social websites
4. Online PR

For some of the topics above, it may be argued that they below in the Search Engine Marketing classification, but I disagree. All 5 elements of SMM are emerging past the early adopter phase and are only beginning the process of crossing the chasm to main stream.

Lets take a quick look at each element in turn and briefly define what we mean.

1. Media Elements

As the SERP’s evolve to different media types so must your online business. Media types that should be seriously targeted in 2008 are:

• images - the use of the alt tag (maybe a bit of legacy SEO here, but now its even more important)
• video - with Youtube starting to appear with more frequency on the SERP’s, getting your message across in videos is crucial. You can get a glimpse into the future by looking at the Ask.com search engine for the keyword phrase , ‘online marketing’. Here you can see images and video as part of the SERP.
• audio feeds - though podcasts have yet to start appearing in the search engines results page, I believe its only a matter of time. Remember that the search engine wants to give relevancy, it’s that means audio, then it’ll serve up audio.

2. Web 2.0 website focus

What your own website? Do you encourage your customers to talk about your products and services on your website. Do you embrace both negative and positive feedback openly? Do you give your customers the ability to communicate with you through your website? Do you have an active blog? A forum? Do you actively engage with your customers niche on other websites? Do seek the assistance of your customers when building new products/services into your business?

3. Social Media websites

So, what online websites should a your company be focusing on and how do you build influence if you want to build your brand and spread your message?

A list of social media driven websites that would be good place to start building your online presence

• Digg
• Reddit
• Propellar
• Hubpages
• Squidoo
• Flickr
• Youtube
• Twitter
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Bebo
• StumbleUpon

So, how do you start to gain influence on these social networks? Dosh Dosh has a great article on this - well worth a read!

4. Online PR

You have something to say - something everyone needs to hear - quickly! How do you get a burst of visibility? You send out a press release online. Simple, right? But where do you start? Below are some News agencies you may wish to start targeting. These are generic news feeds, there is most likely a dedicated news agency for your niche area of expertise.

Generic news feeds:

1. Learn how to submit your news feeds to Google.

2. Submitting to Yahoo is more old school - check it out: Yahoo

3. What about your niche? What online news networks might be interested in your story?

• ENN is a local example of a website news portal that targets the IT and Telecom sector in Ireland

What about you?

How are you seeing traditional online marketing techniques evolve?

Are you aware of how you should be targeting your business online?

The traditional method of capturing visitors is still very relevant, i.e. SEO, but SMM (Social media marketing) is gaining more and more traction - for everyone.