Search engine marketing (SEM) allows your website to be picked up by the search engines and presented to searchers through the search results pages, or SERPs. Social media sites like Twitter or Facebook started as interactive sites that allowed people to connect with friends and relatives from around the world, but they are now being used effectively by businesses for marketing purposes.
They may seem like two very different marketing concepts, but they are actually complimentary when done the right way. Search engine marketing seems like a mechanical, cold way of communicating with electronic spiders while social media websites are very warm, interactive ways of communicating with real people. Yet, when you start to learn more about them you see how they fit together perfectly.
Real People vs. Spiders
The biggest difference between SEM and social media marketing (SMM) seems to be who you are talking to or trying to reach. This is not entirely true because SEM is designed to reach real people just as much as social websites. It is just not as direct as social media websites allow.
Your ultimate goal is always to reach real people who can make decisions that bring your profit. Social media sites allow you to reach these people directly through their Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook accounts, but SEM requires a less direct approach. You have to first be recognized and ranked by the search engine spiders (or bots) in order to finally reach those real people.
Those real people happen to be customers of search engines and social media websites. In order to reach those customers you have to work within the rules of the search engines and the social websites.
See? SMM and SEM comes down to the same thing: reaching those real people who can make your business successful.
Real Conversations vs. Advertising
Here's another thing that seems to be different between SEM and social media websites. Social media websites thrive on real conversations and direct communications while SEM seems more cold or calculated since you are trying to talk directly to search engines first.
This is true to an extent, but you have to create your website content as if it were a direct conversation with real people no matter how much search engine marketing you use to promote that website. SEM fails if your website is only designed to talk to the search engine spiders. It has to be designed to speak to real people while still containing elements needed for the search engines to pick up the site.
So, you are carrying on a conversation and communicating with real people in a real way no matter which type of marketing you use.
Combining the Elements
Search engine marketing and SMM can work hand-in-hand. You can use social media to reach your targeted market in a more personal way outside of your website. When you do this they are more likely to check out your website, which brings in traffic.
Traffic is what you are trying to get with SEM, so social media enhances results in that area. Your website is also enhanced, since it tries to communicate with visitors in a very real, personal manner that is just like the communication used on social media websites
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