Setting The Purpose Of Your Social Media Presence - Social Media Marketing V/S Social Media Optimzation

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Every online marketer today is harping on the social media mantra but everyone is still experimenting with this media for getting the outreach, visibility and that extra mileage which is possible from this marketing platform but there is no sure shot formula to achieve these objectives.

Hence, it is highly important to focus on the purpose of using the social media sites and have a strategic plan else it is very easy for your voice to go unheard inspite of you putting in so much time, effort and resources.

I am sure every one who has experimented with this media has made mistakes, got carried away with the tweeting and realized the futility of just having a presence on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and now Google+ and not achieving anything out of it despite all the efforts and time which has been invested by them.

Every SEO recommends that the company should have a social media presence and thats a valid suggestion indeed, because the search engines have integrated the social data and signals with search results to add more value, quality and are also adding the preferences of your social network to the search results.

So The Questions That Need To Be Answered By Businesses Are –

  • what is the purpose of our presence on social media sites?
  • Is our target to create more klout on the social media site in our niche industry or to make our search presence stronger using social media as one of the options?

The Difference Between Social Media Marketing And Social Media Optimzation

Social Media Marketing is usually creating content and distributing content by sharing it on the social network for maximum out reach. It is usually in the form of a corporate message for its targeted audience which if effective gets shared further just like an advertisement. Its like pushing the message across to more and more people .

Whereas in Social Media Optimization is sharing the content usually in the form of a link so that it gets further shared and people come back to the site so it pulls the targeted visitors to your site via the social media platform.

The selection of the social media platform entirely depends on this purpose .

Social Media Marketing focuses mainly on:

· Advertising

· Direct Selling

· Customer Support

· Public Relations

· Branding

· Communication

· Direct Marketing

· Sales Promotion

· Publicize An Event By Using # tags To Make It A Trending Topic

Social Media Optimization Focuses Mainly On Driving Inbound Traffic From Social Media Sites By:

· Having URL Links For The Content In The Posts So It Can Generate Inbound Traffic

· The Content Can Be In The Form Of Images, Infographics, Videos, News, RSS Feeds, etc.

· Sharing Content Related To Your Industry – Which In A Way Promotes Your Company Beliefs And Value

· Connecting To Communities

· Make Sharing Content Easy So That It Becomes Viral

· Having Rewards For Sharing The Content

· Setting Up The Social Media Profile With A Focus on Linking To The Other Web And Social Media Presence Of the Company To Create Corelation And Improve Quality External Linking.

· On The Proper Bio Description On The Social Media Site In Order To Establish Online Identity And Also Link To The Relevant Site, Blog Or Profile.

Hence , depending on the purpose of your presence on the social media platform the efforts have to be focused on that particular activity to achieve the right objective of either marketing directly or get inbound traffic .

Every business activity needs to have a plan and a purpose , engaging on social media for a business purpose without planning the task is a sheer waste of time and other resources  and may harm the social business image of the company rather than heal it and leverage it.

Author

  • Bharati Ahuja

    Bharati Ahuja is the Founder of WebPro Technologies LLP. She is also an SEO Trainer and Speaker, Blog Writer, and Web Presence Consultant, who first started optimizing websites in 2000. Since then, her knowledge about SEO has evolved along with the evolution of search on the web. Contributor to Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, etc.

July 30, 2011
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