As a website owner, you want to get the most return from your website by having as many eyeballs on it as possible. And to that end, you have probably wondered: between SEO and social media, which drives more leads?
Here’s our take on this age old question:
What Is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Social media marketing involves the use of social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. to create brand awareness and promote your promote your products or services.
A solid social media marketing campaign involves:
- Establishing a presence on the major platforms which include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and a few others. Your choice of platform should be dictated by you’re the needs of your business; for some business, Tumblr, Pinterest, and LinkedIn present better options than their more popular counterparts.
- Creating and sharing content. This can either be free or paid. Social media platforms usually give you the option to “boost” or pay for your content to be shown to a wider audience on the platform. Being able to create content that resonates with people on the social media platform is key to success in social media marketing.
- Engaging with customers through customer service responses, contests, games, and surveys.
What Is SEO?
SEO or search engine optimization involves creating a search-engine-friendly website that appears on the search engine results page for the right query done by the right person.
Although other search engines exist, SEO experts usually target the big three search engines in their campaigns: Google, Bing, and Yahoo. In SEO marketing, you want to make your website trustworthy, resource-rich, and authoritative, in order to show up as high up Page 1 of the search engine results pages (organic or unpaid results) as possible.
This is a long-term endeavor, requiring patience. But once you start seeing results, SEO leads to increased visibility and more organic leads.
SEO vs. SMM
SEO, although long term, will lead to more traffic and eyeballs on your website at lower cost. As organic reach for social media reduces more and more, a lot more marketing dollars will be required to give your content and your products the attention they need.
That said, you’re website is better off going with a mix of both SEO marketing and SMM marketing than relying on just one. Investing in both tactics makes for good strategy.
While social signals do not help rankings on search engine results pages, engagement on social media can lead to more people landing on your website which will in turn boost your rankings on search engines. Likewise, the better your SEO, the more people come to your website and the more they are likely to engage with your business on social media.
It’s a win-win.
Conclusion
You want to pay a lot of attention to what works and what doesn’t for your business because costs can rise quickly, and you want to make the best use of your marketing dollars. Sometimes, it pays to reach out to an expert to make sure you get the best return on your investment. Reach out to us here at Eternity to talk about your website and how we can help make it your best ROI.
