SNM is the accidentally sarcastic acronym I've assigned to Social Network Marketing - a growing commodity offered in the same market as PPC and SEO. Social networking through Digg, Twitter, Facebook and the like is a time-consuming effort and has no effect on search engine rankings that can't be done more efficiently by creative SEO using viral content marketing and extensive deep-linking.
Every online marketing method has an acronym to use as a product identifier, so as of the writing and first publication of this article on May 29, 2010 I hereby copyright the internet marketing product acronym "SNM", which stands for Social Network Marketing. The label implies that the process can only give satisfaction during the infliction and reception of this particular pain and strain on resources that could be better used for the straight-ahead fine-tuning of the website pages and strong promotion work done in an SEO campaign. The difference is that social networking, while increasing brand recognition and awareness, works in virtual time and relies on quite a bit of interaction without immediate financial action by the customer.
The people who are in a hurry to locate information on a commodity by using a search engine are doing so in real time, most likely because they need something and they are qualified and ready to buy whatever it is they need. Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, and the others are straight lines to find the product. After a few queries the prospective buyer will have found what he was looking for and reach for the phone. Search Engine Optimization allows sites to show up among the visible search results on the relevant queries. A well-done site in a market sector that's not too competitive will exist for years in the top positions until someone else does something about it. In this way, SEO produces a steady stream of relevant traffic where qualified buyers can examine your site and contact you.
By contrast, the glorified spam that adorns the inbox every morning from sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, and FaceBook are more of an annoyance than anything and anyone who's got time to follow a dozen sites like Twitter all day is probably eccentric, unemployed or underage. Connecting with possible colleagues is time-consuming and doesn't necessarily lead to any sort of business transaction, and traffic to the company web site won't increase. Requests come in to befriend other people, thereby making more complex communication as the receiver tries to figure out if there's any reason to pay attention. By the time a businessman reads his mail, RSS feeds, and blogs the lights are off and everyone's gone home.
Social Media for use in business is a condensed version of the Public Relations firm of old; the concept is to increase brand awareness and company exposure. It takes a fair sized budget to gain recognition and it is difficult to measure the ROI. Surveys are expensive and measuring small bits of data also consumes resources. With Social media you have to set up analytics accounts, track every event that happens to each social platform, and set up virtual pages to create a vanity URL that redirects to a tracking URL using 301 redirects to log the user as they click through the social site to the linked web site - all just to get some idea of the conversion rate.
Site owners want to know if the Social Network Marketing will make money and they want to know if it will help their SEO efforts to attain higher Google rankings. In the business-to-business world the short answer is "no". With some effort there are ways to make each happen but the ROI would be miniscule compared to other advertising efforts. Bloggers, scientists, or journalists can use SNM to their advantage for readership, discussion, recognition, and educational exchange. Campaigns targeting consumers may benefit in the long run to some extent, but the real barrier to profit is human nature. Social networks depend on willing interaction which is not in real time; as the attention span of the herds grows shorter each year people can't be counted on to remember things or take action after the stimulus has passed. We've all bookmarked dozens of sites we'll never visit again.
Niche sites are the best bet for marketers, for the visitors will share an interest that could be associated with products and services. The outreach of the business message could hit home with those in a position to buy. They may be interested in selling you something you may or may not need. The drawback is that you may be offering a bucket of baseballs to somebody who already owns a bucket of baseballs.
When it comes to SEO, most article directories have "Share" buttons leading to over 230 social networking sites, so the SEO articles kill two birds with one stone...those wishing to send the article off to their favorite blog site can do so with a click. The meat and potatoes of link-building is most effective when done through press releases, listings in relevant SEO directory categories, article source directories like GoArticles, Amazines, My Free Article Central, ArticlesRich, and many others. Good compact content will entice search engines to read and follow the links in a simple fashion, without the need for customizing numerous social media pages, creating graphics and copy, developing a marketing strategy, maintaining, updating, formatting, monitoring, and all those things that big companies can afford but are not realistic for those with limited budgets.
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