Does the Increased Social Media Market Share Change SEO Plans for Small Businesses?

While still a relatively new phenomenon, it is probably safe to state that social media is here for the long haul.  Companies big and small can benefit greatly by learning how to move their products and services through this fast growing marketing channel.  In a very short amount of time, social media has proven to be an effective way to build up a list of contacts, promote brand awareness, and develop strong relationships.  With this segment exploding and hogging the limelight, does the small business still need SEO to reach their target audience?  The answer is a definite yes.  However, they just may need to address their plan to include a social media marketing strategy.  

From a marketing aspect, social media and SEO both strive to meet the same goals.  For example, social media aims to communicate with communities of real people.  Though it is done indirectly, SEO is ultimately performed to meet the very same goal.  However, optimization focuses on search engines with the assumption that they can be used to attract people.  While the overall goal is pretty much one and the same, the uniqueness of these tools means that marketers need to approach them differently when it comes to executing strategy and tactics. 

Social media is all about connecting with a community of users through two-way conversations and content distribution.  Businesses generally approach this marketing channel by establishing their community with personalized communications and engagement.  Content is a big part of SEO, but successful search engine marketing is all about having a vast understanding of how the web works and using analytics to make continuous improvements based on statistics.  Although SEO can be achieved with little to no presence in the social media market, the increasing relevance of this segment is showing that it can have a positive effect in terms of optimization and traffic.   

Internet users, your prospective customers, rely heavily on search engines to find the products and services they need.  In fact, most people type keywords into Google or Yahoo to find their solution.  This means that no matter how big social media gets, it could never make search engine optimization any less valuable.  Even though Google has recently begun indexing content from social media networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, most of your prospects will begin their quest at the search engine.  Long story short, SEO marketing should still be viewed as a must for small businesses.  If anything, it will only help bolster your social media efforts and vice versa. 

SEO and social media share some commonalties that make them both quite valuable to small businesses.  Social media can be leveraged as a tool that helps improve optimization, while SEO can be used to help enhance your social networking endeavors.  With both of them being so prevalent these days, the best strategy is clearly to make the two work together hand in hand.