The times, they are a changin’.

There was once a time when, in its infancy, Internet marketing was segmented and ‘departmentalized’. At any given time, teams of people were working strictly in PR, SEO, Social Media, and so on. Like anything that experiences rapid change and evolution, (See my previous post on the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing), roles have changed within organizations to adapt to the changing best practices and methods of the industry.

Social media and SEO, while individually implemented important, are even better together. The integration of SEO tactics and a social media strategy lead to mutually beneficial results for both practice areas. Being a fully integrated marketing agency, lotus823 is uniquely positioned to explore the newest and most cutting edge methods of search engine and social media marketing.

The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors. Image via Search Engine Land

Google and SEO

I find it fascinating that people outside of industry really have no idea how much Google means to us. Google enjoys 66.5% of the search engine market share in the U.S. To put this in perspective, for every 20 billion web searches, 13.3 billion of them are Google. This is what makes Google so important to web marketers. Google’s Penguin update to its search algorithms quite literally ‘changed the game’ when it comes to SEO tactics. Google has turned the tables on marketers who were building links purely based on quantity. The update puts emphasis on building quality, trustworthy backlinks. Gone are the days of ‘link spamming’, fake reviews, and bogus check-in’s.

Social Media

Social media is like the Swiss army knife of Internet marketing. Brands use social media a number of things: connecting with customers, providing customer support, driving sales, etc. What marketers should be doing (if they’re not already) is using social media as a tool to implement SEO tactics. This is integrated marketing at its finest.

Integrated Marketing

When properly executed, integrated marketing will dramatically improve overall marketing efforts. The backbone of a great integrated marketing strategy is you guessed it, great content. Great content is hard to come by, but we lucked out (see Dave Campbell’s blog posts). The best part about social media is that it is virtually free, meaning your content will be spread across the internet at no cost, as most social media networks are free. Social media helps SEO by bringing things down to a local level. Google knows where customers are, and by targeting your keywords and social media posts on a local level, it will help drive sales to your business.

When carefully planned and properly executed, the marriage of social media and SEO has the ability to make any integrated digital marketing campaign not only perform, but overachieve.

What integrated marketing tactics are you noticing in the industry? Share with us below or reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter.