Editor’s note: Your SEO strategy has failed on my site. Please read my blog policy.

My point has nothing to do with “SEO” and its “definition.” My point has to do with the ability to easily be able to start doing website optimization without needing clients. I’m not sure what your tangent has anything to do with, but like the three other articles written by me and guest writers that you nitpicked, you completely missed the ball. Again.

The video example was a hypothetical example, but it happened. But again, you’re comparing apples to oranges. You actually CREATE viral videos. I am tasked to MARKET a video AFTER it’s created.

Finally, you’ve gotten it wrong again when you talk about “social media experts.” Do me a favor and read my book (unless you’re going to knock that too, simply because it has my name on it) and check out the chapter where it says to set goals. Asking for subscribers, capturing emails, etc. as you say is not necessarily the goal of a campaign or company.

When your goals are the same as mine and these clients I represent, you’ll see what I’m saying. Until then, your comments are completely unrelated.

Thanks anyway for dropping a line.

It is so funny. I am reading your blog and getting so annoyed at how you have this completely wrong. But, then I realized what the problem is. You are using two different definitions for SEO!

YOU are using the term SEO to mean in it’s most basic form “Search Engine Optimization”.

YOUR READERS are using the term SEO to mean Rank number one on the search engine.

Thus the disconnect.

You are saying.. “Hey, any one can optimize their website”

The readers are reading, “any idiot can make their website number one”

That is where the issue is, that is why people think you are dissing SEO. It’s gotten to a point where people just assume that SEO means number 1. They can’t fathom that you just mean, “optimize your website”

Also.. It seems as if you are calling Social Media a glorified PR person.

Not to discredit you, but if you managed to build up buzz for your video by getting people to blog about it or tweet it by asking people then it is not organic and while still impressive should be considered PR.

A True Social Media Expert, would tell the company that is hiring the PR company to make sure they do it right by asking for subscribers, capturing emails, etc.

But, calling up bloggers and saying, Hey can you tweet this video is PR not social media.

And yes, I see that you’re taking a Seth Godin philosophy on this one. Make a remarkable product and the rest will follow.

Still, though, we’d need to argue that even remarkable products need to be marketed. Twitter is a perfect example of this. Thankfully, it had a core group of tech influencers who were the sneezers needed to bring Twitter to the mainstream.

Most products and services fill a need. Some are more niche and others are more general. The right marketing tactics will make those products more appealing since some consumers aren’t convinced they’re for them — but they might actually become convinced if the marketing message is just right. I know that I personally found a lot of great products through great marketing.

Next point: I absolutely don’t see social media as an “interruptive tool” in the way that you say. We agree that social media is about people — fostering relationships and being genuine and then perhaps sharing a little more about yourself and why you might really be here in due time. Yes, there are big brands that might have a one-off campaign (I’ve worked on some myself) that are interruptive in the way that you say, and while I don’t agree with that kind of tactic (I think these brands should be involved in social interaction throughout), that’s just sometimes how it is. I’ve used the examples above simply to say that I know that some companies do this. It’s not an explicit endorsement of these tactics.

I’ve never quite said that metrics, ROI, etc. is the essence of social media, but it’s certainly part of it if you want to be called a “marketer.” Actually, let me say what I believe and have said on this blog and to anyone who asks: social media is about real relationships with real people.

Also, I’m not sure why you think my comment about Susan Boyle is sad. I agree with you. But her specific viral success was accidental. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t expected. Even Simon Cowell didn’t expect her to be greatly successful — could you blame the rest of the world? It’s like David after Dentist or JK Wedding Entrance Dance. Perhaps Susan is on another level herself, actually, but the latter two videos were quite viral but possibly unexpectedly so. I know that JK Wedding Dance actually was unexpected, since interviews with Jill and Kevin specifically said that they wanted to share their wedding with friends and family and never expected the success they achieved. My point about Susan Boyle was to say that it was at the right place at the right time, but there were no marketing masterminds behind it at all. Sometimes great content markets itself just because it’s good — like you said, the content is remarkable. (Not all companies/products/services work this way, though! In fact, 99% of them don’t.)

I think we’re essentially skirting the issue though. I think we both agree on many of the points but my point really is that I don’t think the everyone who exists is entitled to call themselves marketers. That dilutes the discipline and puts the people who actually make a living out of it in the category of snake oil. I’m glad people have become more knowledgeable in social media, but they’re not ready to call themselves marketers. For our sake, they shouldn’t.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend

Interesting how this conversation was dead until last night and now I’m finally seeing detractors. Might I have Michael to thank for this?

On the first paragraph, I disagree with you. Once you’ve learned all there is to know in both disciplines, you can simply get started on SEO immediately, thereby being able to apply your skill. My point is simply that you can’t easily do that with social media marketing. The reason for that is because you need a testbed upon which to experiment and apply your learned skills. With SEO, you have websites. With social media marketing, you have to get clients first and foremost to actually apply that learned skill. I never said anything about it being easy to get SEO clients. I said that it was easy to start with SEO as a practice.

(I also mentioned in the comments that I’ll have a follow-up post on this.)

On the second paragraph, you nail it on the head with this quote:
“but if the product/content sucks… it just freakin sucks!”
That’s true. The right marketer can give it more eyeballs than it might have gotten previously though.

The bottom line is that when someone hires you to do something, Aaron, they want to see return on their investment. And they want to know how they got there. Smart people don’t hire “influencers” without knowing what they’re paying for. Most influencers simply don’t consider themselves marketers because well, they’re not!

You know who is influential? Celebrities. Are they marketers? Some endorse products, after all. I wouldn’t call all influential people marketers, and I’ve certainly seen no-names behind real successful viral stories. Fred was a nobody up until a point.

People hire social media marketing firms for the sole purposes of getting their content, good or bad, spread in the right places. They might want page-views. They might want links. They might want to build community. Yet they may not have the skills do to this themselves. Some people who don’t have “influence” can do a damn good job at bringing visibility to a specific campaign because they know how to cultivate the right relationships (social, right?). That’s part of it. Having the right influence when starting out may not necessarily be needed.

But there are some technical aspects to social media marketing. Surely if you work with clients, you’ve been asked to provide deliverables and actually, well, deliver them, right? Surely you’ve actually been asked to promote sucky content, right? (Or do you send all prospective clients away unless you can score a home run? In that case, they really didn’t need you and that would be ethically questionable, IMO. Just saying.) In the marketing discipline that you and I know, hopefully, most clients will actually pay for a breakdown of what is being done and what actually happened.

That said, I’m sure that some companies have signed up with celebrities too — you know, that influential type — and not actually bothered with metrics. But those are fewer and farther between because marketing budgets are typically small (and even when they’re large, the companies behind the promotion want to know that they’re getting what they’re paying for). People want to know that they’re investing good value with their elected “influencer.” You better hope that there’s some investment made.

The bottom line, though is really this point:

If everyone had GREAT content, they simply wouldn’t need marketers.