SMM vs. SMO: New Marketing Terms Defined?

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Essentially, Olthuis holds that Social Media Optimization refers to practices that are done on site. This could include stuff like adding “Digg This!” and “Delicious” tags to your content.

Social Media Marketing refers to things that are done off site, which includes submitting viral-hopeful content to YouTube.

In response I propose that on-site or off-site could prepend either the term Social Media Marketing or Social Media Marketing and so therefore is not sufficient for requiring that both terms remain in a given marketer’s business lexicon.

Further, in his definition Olthuis includes content only in the SMM, or off-site category. I believe that housing viral/link bait content on site is a fantastic strategy, but is not allowable in the structure he proposes.

I prefer the more general Social Media Marketing term because it seems broader. Of course I come from the school that houses search engine optimization within the broader term of search engine marketing.

Things start to get really blurry when you consider viral campaigns that generate search rank boosting links. But that’s the world we live in and as long as we’re making money for ourselves it doesn’t matter too much what we’re calling it I guess

If you prefer the tried and true search marketing where you have more predictable returns I suggest you check out Fishkin’s latest project – Creating an Accurate Formula for Predicting Keyword Search Volume.

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