SearchEngineWatch.com and ClickZ.com have been running articles recently about search engine marketing and social media. The odd thing, in my mind, is the focus on the social bookmarking sites.

“These days, it seems that social media marketing is on the minds of every search engine marketer. With the importance of links in the algorithms of all the major search engines, along with the benefits of putting your pages in front of a broad, targeted audience, getting your articles popular on major social media sites like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon is an important part of any search marketing strategy. ” - Eric Enge

For the last 5 years, SEM has been a large part of my web duties, so I can understand the SEM focus on StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Digg, et al. SEM and SEO is about traffic, pure and simple. However, search engine marketers are marketing technicians, not social marketers (duck! here comes the storm!) in that SEM is about the technical aspects of web sites, algorithms, etc. while SMM is about talking to people. If SEM is focusing on the social bookmarking sites, they are missing the picture of social marketing.

Admittedly, SEM talks big about optimizing text and content for the web site users (well, for Google search bots, really), and they talk about the art and science of search engine optimization. They also talk about user-centric experiences (because that’s what the search engines like), but rarely - if ever - have I heard SEM talk about talking to people. Enge goes on in his article to talk about the advantages of making friends on StumbleUpon and del.icio.us, but again, this is one small part of the big picture of SMM.

An analogy: SEM is like taking tons of video footage of people in a store and arranging the products on the shelves, the position of the cash registers and the signage on the building to get people coming into the store and optimizing the buying flow. SMM is about talking to those people and finding out what they like to buy. And, for success, one needs the other.

The general impression I am getting (except from those who read blogs like Webwalker) is that the majority of (traditional) marketers, PR people, advertising people and SEM people are looking at SMM like the proverbial elephant (and SMM is large and somewhat ill-defined). Everyone is feeling a different part of the elephant and defining that as SMM. (I’m not innocent - I also have a perception of SMM that probably doesn’t match yours).

Instead of trying to claim the SM space for themselves, the different specialties need to join forces and combine their knowledge. Smart companies who want to make an impact will do this (and some are doing this quite successfully). The rest of us will be left holding onto the tail of the elephant.

Share This