If you are interested in social media marketing and how it compares to SEO, this is great article to check out. The author goes on to explain the pros and cons of both based on the eventual ROI and factors in the time used to go through each process. He makes excellent points through, and the only disagreement I have is that I believe both are necessary, not one or the other. He doesn't suggest only using one method, but he does hint in that direction.

Tonight, I'm throwing out a hypothesis about social media participation & social media marketing:

The majority of marketers who engage in social media do so NOT because it produces greater ROI (professionally), but because the metrics are more immediately tangible and emotionally rewarding.

Social media engagement, whether it's building a name for yourself on Twitter, growing your connections on Facebook, increasing the number of followers on Digg or ratcheting up your popularity in a niche service or forum produces some very compelling results. Changing some title tags, tweaking internal links or writing an article on a boring, business-relevant subject may bring more direct financial ROI per hour invested, but the metrics don't FEEL as emotionally rewarding.

I'll show, rather than tell.

Let's say I put in some effort attracting more relevant visitors to my site. I see that a certain phrase is sending good quality traffic via my analytics and decide to pursue a higher ranking for that keyword. I do a bit of external link research, find some good places for a listing, maybe acquire a small handful of external links. I tweak the title tag, the H1 and a bit of the page content and make the call to action more prominent and compelling. I find a few important pages on my site (the top pages tool is badass for this) and place some good internal links. My rankings rise a few positions and I see more traffic the next week.

SEOmoz | Getting Honest About Social Media Marketing

Technorati Tags: seo, smm, social media, marketing

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