SMM as an extension of SEM

Before Social Media Marketing (SMM) created the incumbent buzz, it was Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which was the talk of the buzz town.

Today at almost 12.5 billion USD search engines constitute almost 50% of the total online marketing spending in the US. SEM is widely researched upon at all levels, be it corporate, academic or web 2.0, and has reached a stage where it is structured to a great extent. On the other hand social media is still a black box and it will take some time for it to become the cash cow it promises to be. In the mean time, what is required is a structured approach to the marketing. This is yet to happen. Popular perception is that innovation is the most important criteria when it comes to SMM. While I agree that ingenuity is great especially when it comes to a new (read any) media, I believe that even a conservative approach to SMM might help advertisers do well.

For starters we can try to understand social media marketing from the perspective of structured search engine marketing methods. Though social media and search engine are two completely different platforms, the marketing techniques need not be fundamentally very different. Lets us see why

1. Both mediums need two routes – organic and paid.
2. Organic: While search engine optimization aims at increasing page rankings, the main objective of social media optimization is to increase virality. Yet similar methods need to be adopted for both viz. tagging, bookmarking, mash ups/widgets, inbound links etc.
3. Paid: Paid SEM differs from paid SMM only in its reach (as yet!). Both mediums essentially rely on keywords. In SMM keywords maybe text in the profile information, tags, any part of user generated content etc.
4. Behavioral or historical data (stored in cookies etc.) helps optimize both mediums.
5. Both mediums need relevant content. Better ad has more ‘clicks’ and more relevant content have greater virality.

Unlike most other forms of online marketing, both SEM and SMM are 100% web 2.0 marketing mediums! The purpose of SEM is to provide information one is looking for. The purpose of SMM is to provide information one hasn’t started looking for. One thrives for greater visibility and the other looks for greater virality. But end of the day both mediums need to reach out only to the most qualified consumers available in the online space. And there are limited ways one can do that yet.

Hence SEM and SMM not only have intertwined objectives they also end up using similar tools to meet these objectives. It only makes sense to look at one as an extention of the other.

Cheers!