The world of digital marketing is one that is constantly growing, adapting and changing. New marketing techniques and alterations to Google’s algorithms mean that businesses must continually reassess and revisit their marketing strategies in order to ensure they continue to be as successful as possible.
Bearing this in mind, understandably it can be difficult to find and maintain the right balance between SEO and social media marketing. Both are integral parts of an effective digital marketing campaign, yet many businesses end up falling into the common trap of spending all their time and attention focusing on one part – often at the expense of the other.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to search engine optimisation versus user engagement. A successful digital marketing campaign combines the two in order to utilise the benefits of both, yet many businesses end up spending an unequal amount of time and resource on the two areas.
The Benefits of SEO
SEO has long been the go-to favourite of businesses looking to expand their digital marketing ventures. As more and more people head online to search for businesses, products and services, a company with a large online presence is much more likely to take advantage of all that additional traffic than a less tech-savvy business.
Therefore, seeing as potential customers are consistently heading online to search for things,if you want to get noticed, you need to be ranking highly for your target keywords on search engines.
This leads to another benefit of SEO – the ability to target a much wider range of keywords and phrases than allowed by more traditional methods of marketing.With research into your industry and competitors, you can target the right keywords that will drive more traffic to your site.
The Benefits of Social Media Marketing
On the flipside, what are the benefits of social media marketing?
Social media marketing is all about user experience and developing relationships with real people in real time. The best social media marketing campaigns are ones which focus on people over promotion – once you start paying attention to your customers, you are much more likely to get recommendations through likes, tags, comments and shares, therefore increasing your social media presence organically.
Similarly, social media allows you to respond to any comments or issues raised by your customers in real time. If users see that you have an active social media presence and are regularly replying to comments, they are much more likely to get involved with your business in the future. Customer service has always been an integral part of business – with social media, it is merely shifting to a new platform.
So how do you go about finding the right balance?
Now that you understand why both of these techniques are integral to creating an effective digital marketing strategy, it becomes easier to find the equilibrium.
The most successful online marketing campaigns utilise a mix of the two, working in sync to improve your online presence. For example, keywords are, of course, still a vital component, but so are engaging meta descriptions, links from other relevant and authoritative sites, engaging images and regularly updated, interesting content across the board. After all, it is important not to forget that there are plenty of additional sub-sections when it comes to online marketing, all of which add up to create the overall effectiveness of your entire campaign.
If you are new to digital marketing, it may be easier and less overwhelming to focus on SEO and social media marketing individually at first before then working to combine the two further down the line.
Ideally, you need a strategy that gives the customer what they are looking for, engages potential customers, and attracts further traffic – all at the same time.It may sound daunting, but given plenty of careful planning and research, creating and implementing a highly successful digital marketing campaign is definitely within your reach.
Understandably, getting the right balance between SEO and social media marketing can at first be a tricky and time-consuming endeavour. However, once you’ve got it sussed, the benefits are many and you should soon be seeing a noticeable increase in the success of your digital marketing strategy.
