Social Media Marketing shares some similarities with Search Engine Optimization but for the most part the two are very different. Here we’ll discuss the differences between the two. To read more about SEO go to our page on Search Engine Optimization.

Social Media Marketing and SEO differ on a few major points.

1. SEO is where a business works to rank more highly in a search engine or search engines for content, products, or services users are searching for. In contrast on most social media websites users are more interested in engaging with each other or brands via content or by posting messages. While these websites might employ search features of their own, they rarely use them in the same way they use a search engine.

2. Many social media platforms use algorithms to determine what content gets placed into a user’s feed much like search engines use algorithms to determine what content to display for a keyword search result. However, when optimizing content on social media to appear in a feed a marketer is working to get content seen in a short-time frame to gain engagements. In SEO the marketer is working to get content to rank in a more long-term fashion.

3. SEO works for capturing ‘natural demand’ while social media marketing works to capture demand that is generated by hype, trends, or things happening in the current term or near-future.