Here’s the problem with traditional SEO and SEM: Whether you’re focused on organic rankings or PPC, it’s a passive marketing strategy. What do I mean by that? Let me explain:

You optimize your web site (SEO), or write your ad and submit it (PPC), and then you sit back and wait.

Hopefully, the searcher uses your keyword.

Hopefully, your site (or your ad) shows up in the SERPs.

Hopefully, the searcher clicks on your listing (or ad).

It's all about hope. You can only do so much, and then you have to cross your fingers and hope for the best. I don’t know about you, but for the clients I’ve worked with, “hopefully” isn’t a marketing strategy.

So, how do you move beyond hope? By not waiting and hoping for customers to find you; by going out and finding them where they are. This is what Social Media Marketing is all about. You find the communities where your potential customers are gathered and you join the community. You participate as a regular member of the community. You follow the community rules and participate not as a marketer, but as a valuable member of the group. You don't start spamming everyone. The idea is engage with your potential customers, not piss them off.

I love SEO. I love doing SEO. I love helping clients get qualified, convertable traffic from natural search. But SEO is limited to some degree because it’s built on the idea of hope. SEO is a necessity, and every smart business online should be trying to get as much natural search traffic as possible. But it can't stop there.

Hoping customers find you is not a marketing strategy. Going out and finding them ... that's a marketing strategy.