By Shannon Johnson, social media practitioner at Sitewire.
I have news that might not be new: gone are the days of treating search engine optimization and social media as separate methods.
Let me be clear. This is not to say that they are substitutes for one another or that they are mutually exclusive. This is to say that the success of each greatly depends on the other. Today SEO and social media are more intertwined than ever before.
The problem organizations tend to have is the compartmentalizing of the search and social media department. SEOs tend to know more about social media because offsite optimization and link building are necessary tactics whereas most social media practitioners are too focused on managing and monitoring communities that they forget about the need to be optimizing the content they publish or the actual social hubs they use to foster those communities.
The jobs of SEOs and social media practitioners are not minutely specialized like a bolt screwer in a Ford Model T assembly line. Instead, their jobs and skills are dynamic and highly interrelated. Is the lack of collaboration and cross-training between the two departments the missing piece that’s leading to miscommunication, duplicated efforts, and missed opportunities in your organization?
