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Search Engine Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: The Showdown

When it comes to driving traffic to your website, there are a variety of ways to get visitors. The primary two that individuals and businesses almost always have a struggle with investing their time and money into are search and social. Sometimes the issue is convincing people why these are a necessity for a thriving business. Other times, the conflict is whether to invest in one marketing strategy more than the other, or to only pursue one marketing strategy but not the other.

How Search Beats Social

First of all, let’s look at the reasons why you might want to choose search engine marketing over social media marketing.

More People Look for Business on Search

Think about your own habits. Whenever you are looking for something, from an air conditioning repair company to a zumba instructor, where do you go first? Most likely, you will go to a search engine – Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, AOL, Blekko, or one of the many other options available.

A report by Econsultancy found that 61% of consumers use search engines to help them in product research before making a purchase. This means that if you want to get discovered, you will want to rank well for your target keywords.

By |Communities, Development, Psychology, Social Media, Web Marketing|0 Comments
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Raise Next Year’s Profits With a Year-End Business Review

How has business been this year? Are you aware of how the various sectors of your organization did this year, and would you like for them to do better next year? If so, then it is time to perform a year-end business review.

By |Social Media, Usability, Web Marketing|1 Comment
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Has Social Media Helped Your Business?

social mini Has Social Media Helped Your Business?Two separate reports on social media marketing were released this week with – on the surface, at least – what seem like diametrically opposite results.

According to the 2011 Industry Report from Social Media Examiner, 90 percent of more than 3,000 Web marketers say that social media is an important facet of their business today. Brand exposure was identified as the greatest benefit, with 88 percent of respondents citing it as a positive result of their social media campaigns.

By |Communities, Social Media, Web Marketing|0 Comments
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Why Convert Your Website to WordPress?

WP on Wood Custom resized Why Convert Your Website to WordPress?Why would you want to convert your website to run on a popular blogging platform?

WordPress, one of the most successful open-source blogging platforms, has become a powerful tool for integrating Web 2.0 features on your website. Besides an excellent Content Management System (CMS), WordPress offers thousands of free plugins (created by a community of developers) that can add a variety of features and functionality to a website.

Even if you’re not ready to host a blog on your website, your website’s theme can be converted to WordPress to maintain your current look-and-feel while adding useful features such as social media integration and search engine optimization (SEO), which could otherwise be expensive to implement.

By |Social Media, Usability, Web Marketing|6 Comments
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Transmedia: The Experience of the Future?

transmedia Transmedia: The Experience of the Future?
With the former glory of old, linear media fading, Melody Ayres-Griffiths examines just what the new media artform known as ‘transmedia’ is, and how it will engage an increasingly discerning yet time-starved populace in an immersive and interactive way.

By |Collaboration, Communities, HCI, Social Media, Web Marketing|1 Comment
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Social Media Analytics & Internet Marketing

As social media keeps providing new marketing opportunities, in addition to a way for online users to simply pass the time, the need for social analytics is becoming more pressing.

socialmediaapril kasteler Social Media Analytics & Internet MarketingUtilizing reporting tools that are available online today can help Internet marketers continue to shape their social media strategy and overall online interaction methods.

Some of the most important metrics to track when it comes to social media include the ROI – how time spent marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter translates into revenue for the company – and the growth and interaction factors surrounding a company’s online profiles and communities.

Any metric can be broken down into granular parts for a closer look or to add quantitative micro-metrics to an overarching qualitative metric. For example, the number of links acquired on shared or viral content pages via social media is a key factor for the SEO-minded.

By |Communities, Social Media, Web Marketing|4 Comments
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The 5 Reasons Most Companies Aren’t Measuring Social Media

see no evil The 5 Reasons Most Companies Arent Measuring Social Media
We hate math.

Our abhorrence for calculation enables us to mutually agree on statistically dubious metrics with nary a shrug or arched eyebrow. Consider Nielsen ratings, which are used to determine the popularity of all TV shows and, consequently, how the dozens of billions of dollars in TV advertising is apportioned.

By |Communities, Psychology, Social Media|2 Comments
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LinkedIn Secrets to Success

linked mini LinkedIn Secrets to SuccessPlenty has been written about Facebook and Twitter, and how those sites can help you make more money online. Yet, LinkedIn – a very powerful tool to target business professionals – remains under the radar.

If you are looking to get your products and services in front of the general mass audience, then Facebook and Twitter are good solutions. But if you want to attract wealthy, influential professionals then you need a LinkedIn presence.

By |Communities, Social Media, Web Marketing|2 Comments
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Behind the Blogosphere

The purpose of our blog is simple: provide useful information and content that would help our subscribers on certain subject matters. We spend days searching for the best posts to place on our blog. Some we write on our own, while others we redistribute from what we consider as professional and reliable sources.

As authors, we understand that plagiarism and content theft is wrong and unprofessional. It disrespects the original author and in some cases hurts their reputation when used in an unprofessional manner. When we find an article to share with our subscribers, we first try to contact the author in order to obtain permission to redistribute their content on our blog. If we cannot obtain written approval, we always look for a privacy policy statement or the phrase “All Rights Reserved” within the source of the article. Information on this subject matter may be found in any law book about ethics and blogging.

Sharing others’ work (and giving credit) helps authors reach a wider audience. Social media is about gathering and sharing information with others. When you visit a blog, you usually see Tweet, Digg, Facebook and other social media buttons in order to make sharing with a wider audience possible.

By |Communities, Social Media|5 Comments
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Almost Half of Small Businesses Find Customers in Social Networks

socialMedia Almost Half of Small Businesses Find Customers in Social Networks

In social media, is there truth to the proverb,”seek and ye shall find?”

As our experience in new media matures, learning what it is we wish to seek and also accomplish is at the forefront of rapid evolution. Converting questions into objectives is how we grow and succeed. While the opportunities within social media in general are sweeping, one such possibility that’s largely untapped in business social networking is the ability to find customers and prospects as well as learn what inspires them to make decisions and share experiences.

By |Social Media|2 Comments
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