Is it better to market online with social media or the search engines?

[Tamika]

With so many social media sites out there do you think they will replace the search engine for marketing online or for folks to find what they are looking for?

[Thomas]

Stick with the major search engines. When people are looking for goods or services, more often than not, they will use a search engine to find it, not facebook, myspace or youtube.

[cosmos]

At this point, search engine marketing (SEM) is still better than social media marketing because SEM is:

1) more proven
2) much more measurable
3) target customers in the buying mode (rather than socializing mode)

[jim c]

People have gone way overboard on the social media scam. It is not for marketing your website, it is a social setting, and if you look at them, there are little, if any consumer or service type sites on them.

One of the few ways to generate revenue from them is if you have a news based site and are selling advertising space, An Image site that host peoples pics, and sometimes interesting and funny pics get to the top, other than this, you are wasting your time. They are looking for entertainment or political news on these type of sites, Period!

If you have a service or product site, unless you have the new and crazy new invention, you are spinning your wheels using social media.

The search engines work for service and e-commerce because it is targeted traffic by keyword. This means if you have potato chips for sales on your site, and someone searches for potato chips, you have a realistic chance of making a sale, but I doubt that social media will bring any sales, because it is "i ran across this" or "boardom" type traffic, where with search engines, they are finding you by keywords, which means they were actively looking for that specific thing.

Online marketing is not rocket science, but common sense. Just think it through.

[Andrew T]

Both. You will not believe how many hits my site got when I asked for someone to review it on Yahoo! Answers, plus I have a Facebook fan page. Use Google as your main search engine!

[poorly_inked]

I use the search engines. I found it too hard to get enough of a following in the social media market. Also, try using video. I have a blog that teaches effective video marketing techniques. http://videoforim.blogspot.com

[BizSharing]

I don't think social media will ever replace search engine. Social media and search engine are two different animal. They have their own purpose. They have to exist with each other to have a long life. So you need to understand what they are in order to use them effectively in your marketing.

[guitarists]

Hmmmm....
I think we only market the site into social media and social sites to get the quality target and if possible back links, which would indirectly help us find good positions in search engines..
Search engines are the places which are more often viewed for any information rather than any other social networking site.
Therefor, search engines are much more important over social networking.

[Rinorobert]

Hello,

Stick with search engines, You will get more traffic

Hope this helps

[unlimited1010]

Fact: Both - Use social media to help you rank better on search engines. I have one business that gets sales from all of the above.
We use amazon,twitter,myspace and many other means and we get sales from each daily! They all add up and they all help you rank better.