Social media and SEO, both are inbound channels yet very different from each other. Search Engine Optimisation is all about receiving traffic through search engine rankings while social media is more about building relationships, connecting with the audience and getting traffic through social media channels. The efforts and outcome in both are very different from each other. Many times, a company might decide to hire a social media agency to grow their social media audience without considering the power of SEO or the company might decide to work on ranking the website while completely ignoring the power of social media.
If you are finding it difficult to make a choice, let’s go through a quick comparison between both the strategies.
Intent & the Mindset of the Audience
There is a difference in the intent of the audience of social media and the audience of a search engine. SEO audience has a specific purpose or a need to go to a search engine and look for information that they want to know. They are more likely to buy your product or service, but unlike social media audience, there is a minimal chance that they will share this information with others. Your business knows what this audience is thinking but you are not sure about who these people are. In social media marketing, you can easily target the audience as you know who these people are, but you don’t know what they are thinking. They were just browsing when they saw you, they do not have a strong intent to buy but they are more likely to share the information.
Type of Content
Content is the key in both social media marketing and SEO. Posts for social media marketing like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube will be smaller in length as compared to research-based content used for search engine optimization. One of the main objectives of social media is to bring customer engagement so the content will be less technical and capable of evoking emotions such as happiness, anger or any surprise. For search engines, long form of content works better or detailed instructional posts that answer queries. So search engines and social media depend on different types of content and at the same time, they can depend on each other as well. Eg. An infographic on social media linking to a detailed post is a key to drive traffic to your website and optimizing it for SEO.
Reach and Success Limit
Designing a strategy and achieving goals in social media marketing is not as straight forward as it is for SEO. For search optimization, a business will pick the relevant keywords and starts on getting top ranking. Thought it is not an easy process, but the path is clear. But with social media, a business will use a different strategy for each campaign, will try different platforms and innovative ways to engage the audience.
SEO is primarily based on the information search and social media is for engagement. With SEO, traffic coming to your website will not exceed the number of searches done for that phrase that particular day. But, with social media, there is no limit to the number of audiences your page can get. A content that goes viral can quickly spread the information in a very short span of time.
Required Efforts
There is a difference in the kind of efforts and the amount of effort required in social media marketing and SEO. For social media, you need a proper plan, great content, consistency in posting the content, apps and monitoring tools to schedule calendars, posts them and track the performance. Since the life of a social media post is short, it is important to be consistent and responsive. With the useful tools, though it is easy to manage the social media however it still needs more efforts. SEO is a slow process and it might take a long time to rank your website. SEO involves its own kind of efforts but unlike social media, the consistent stress of managing audience, brand and services is not there.
SEO if done in the right way, could involve fewer efforts and may return more conversions. Social media may involve more time and efforts but the opportunity it gives to connect with your customers and its contribution to creating brand awareness is immense.
NFINITY8 is a digital marketing company and SEO consultation agency in Dubai. We provide search engine optimization consultation services whether you are seeking help to resolve a particular issue in your website or you want a dedicated service for long-term. There is no overnight success in any kind of marketing, NFINITY8 being an SEO expert in Dubai, helps businesses to keep their websites up to date with the SEO trends. We do a full SEO audit of the website and then create a plan, unique for every business.
We also offer advanced social media solutions to increase your brand recognition and improve your social media presence. Some of our key services are:
• PPC
• YouTube Marketing
• Facebook Marketing
• Instagram Marketing
• Google AdWords
Want to know more about these services? You can call us on 042660888 or mail us at [email protected].
