| On 06.18.09, In Uncategorized, by deep |
It’s in human nature to make a comparison. Just like a child saying, “Who is stronger Batman or Superman?” If we consider SEO to be superman then obliviously the Social Media has to be the Batman, with its overwhelming gadgets and tools.
But, seriously which is better or which is stronger? It’s a tug of war which will go never ending. Therefore it’s best to know the strength and weakness of both and utilize them optimally. Lets look at the pros and cons of both:
Pros
1. Will bring high amount of easily estimated traffic per day.
2. Increase branding of your product.
3. Potential customers can find their way easily to your web-sites
4. The ranking is long lasting and dependable
5. Customizable for diverse audience
6. Many indicators are present to measure the effectiveness of SEO
Cons
1. Its take longer time to set up a good ranking in search engine.
2. Missing the target on some keywords can lead to waste of time.
3. No guarantee of the conversion of the traffic.
4. Dependent upon the random trend of the keywords.
5. Different Search engine has different criteria for page ranks.
6. Creates limitations to the website’s design for eg: flash based contents .
Pros
1. It takes less time for the campaign to act on customer.
2. Can be targeted to the particular customer individually.
3. Real customers can directly interact with the management or developer team.
4. Allow users immediately share the service to other people creating a chain effect
5. You can build brand loyalty through blogs and other content generation and get connected to the customers.
6. You can learn more about the needs of the customer and implement them in your product.
Cons
1. A dedicated team needs to be assigned for continuous presence in the media
2. Continuous relevant content generation is required
3. There is a delay between the creation of the relationship with the customers and the actual ROI.
4. There is high risk of getting involved in the negative criticism of the customers.
5. Less number of indicators developed for tracking the success of the campaign.
Obliviously, these pros and cons are not going to mean that one is better than the other, or that one should chose one against the other. These facts points out the limitation of the both method of marketing. In today’s competition, both the method needs to applied with strategies plan. Both require your equal attentions.
I hope I didn’t miss out any points, but if I did do suggest them.
3 Responses
Interesting point of view! I had a couple of ideas to expand on these -
1. I would say that another PRO of SEO is that customers are more likely to spend time on your site because your content is relevant to their search: the keywords you use on your site match with the keywords they search with, leading them directly to the content they are looking for.
2. To expand on #5 in the PROs of Social Media (”You can build brand loyalty through blogs and other content generation and get connected to the customers.”)- people are more likely to trust other consumers or bloggers that they follow on a regular basis. By spreading your message through the voice of a 3rd party, it lends it more credibility.
3. I disagree with Con #4 under Social Media, (”There is high risk of getting involved in the negative criticism of the customers.”) – The criticism is still out there, regardless of whether or not you use social media. You should look at this as an opportunity to harness all the criticism, take internal steps to fix it, and then respond to your customers in real time to let them know you are handling the problem.
One more Cons of SEO is ” Customer do not know unitl he/she searches in search engine which is totally depend upon the type of keywords customer is using to search.
I too disagree with Con#4 under Social Media. The negative criticism totally comes out of type of product or service you gave to the customer.
Hi Ashley,
Thank you for adding some valuable points which I seem to have clarified. Marketing through social media either online or offline has always been a key way of improving a brand and its same for the online social media too.
Your points on trust through blog and other medium is very valid. I do agrees on those facts.
Regarding the third point which I have included on my list ,” risk of negative criticism” Well you are very right on the fact that most of the products get a buzz due to negative criticism. It seems that people enjoy the fact that there is some thing on which they can criticize. It is the way of few brands to make their presence.
But the risk, which I have mentioned, exists due to the fact that most of the people out there, can’t take it as suggestion rather they get entangled in the discussion and lose their credentials. I have seen many bloggers losing their readers cause they couldn’t handle it properly.
Otherwise, I do agree that its the one way to come on top.
once again, thanks for your comment.