Oh the glory of social media! It is easy to understand why marketers place high value to marketing using social media. It is indeed, a great way to attract new customers and promote repeat business at the same time.

From increased exposure, traffic and sales to better lead generation, improved brand loyalty and decreased marketing budgets – the benefits of employing social media for marketing are numerous. Before you get super impressed and decide to spend all your hard-to-find marketing pounds on social media, let me say this –

Social media is not enough on its own! Not for improving sales. Not for increasing customer loyalty. Certainly not for improved search rankings. 

Why is it not enough?

For the simple reason that search engine optimisation is much more than the mere optimisation of social media profiles for better search ranking. Successful SEO stands on six pillars – 1) Benchmarking, 2) Keyword optimisation, 3) Content strategy, 4) On-site optimisation, 5) Off-site optimisation and 6) Social media. Here I’ll take the liberty of saying that the six pillars are ranked in their order of importance.

It doesn’t make much business sense to forget the top five aspects of optimisation for search engines and focus on the last one alone, right? Social signals need to be supported by other efficient methods of search optimization if you want to reach your SEO goals.

So where does social media really stand?

Target audience, both prospects and customers form an ever-evolving spectrum that changes its preferences, likes and dislikes rather frequently. Results of the SEO Benchmarking Survey 2013 by Marketing Sherpa, show that social media is 18th in the list of most effective SEO tactics.

Of the 1,131 marketers that were interviewed by the group towards the end of 2013 for the survey, 64 percent said they found social media “somewhat effective”. 18 percent found social media “very effective” in reaching their SEO goals, while another 18 percent said social media was “not effective” at all.

Now I am very pro-social media myself. I believe, and encourage, all businesses to initiate and maintain a strong social-media presence and engage their fans as well as followers regularly. However, if you do only that you will find yourself in trouble. Alternatively, if a majority of your marketing time and budget is devoted to social media, SEO results may leave you wishing you had done things differently.

What you lose by thinking social media can do it all alone

You lose out on making the best of the first 17 SEO tactics that have worked well for other marketers. These include webinars, webpages, case studies, reviews, e-books, white papers, dedicated mobile apps, micro websites, electronic newsletters, video, articles, photos, blog posts, mobile content, press releases, online magazines and podcasts.

Content, which is a major pillar of SEO has been ruled by video for much of 2014 and expect the trend to continue for some good years ahead. Not surprisingly, Marketing Sherpa found webcasts and webinars to be the top content-types for improved ranking. They allow you to leverage the power of SlideShares, PowerPoint presentations, infographics and live personal interactions – all at the same time.

According to Moz, content-pieces that contain videos attract three times as much traffic as all-text pieces. Imagine what all of that traffic can do for your link-building campaign. You can, of course, share the content on social media and maximize benefits. Similarly, emails and newsletters outperform social media in getting traffic and building links.

What is the best approach then?

Use social media to complement your SEO efforts, which should be primarily focused on content, keywords, on and off-site optimization as well as benchmarking. Use Facebook and Twitter because your target audience spends time there and not because every brand you know uses them.

If you target B2B clients for instance, jumping on the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon will help you only marginally, if at all. Most of your clients are on LinkedIn or browsing through the web looking for useful resources to gain an idea of the big players of the industry. So your SEO strategy should focus on displaying thought leadership, demonstrating authority and getting quality inbound links from other websites.

Use it as per your needs

The idea is to use social media because it makes sense to your business and not because all marketing literature advise people to do so. When using social media, use it well. Ensure that you are ready for the commitment, because social platforms are not outside-experts that you can hire to help with your goals. They are children that need to be nurtured and taken care of, before they become old enough to handle SEO duties.

If your business has scope to benefit from social platforms and you plan to make them the centre stage, ensure that you have the capability to handle PR disasters quickly and prevent them from ruining your hard-earned repute. One happy customer tells about your brand to 5 people, but an upset customer tells the whole world about his/her bad experience! With social media, it’s now easier than ever to spread the word (both good and bad). You should also be prepared to handle constant platform changes (yesterday Facebook, today Twitter, tomorrow something else), keep up with the latest social media trends and complement your social activities with other SEO techniques.

Feature image credit: Painting Vector / BigStock