re: Experiences with Social Media Marketing for Business?

Baldona,

These are common mistakes, but most of what you said is not strictly true.

"My understanding of SEO is that blogs, articles, and website content drive SEO in addition to paying for it. The more content your website or social media has on a certain subject, the better the search rating. "

This is broadly true, but not specifically true. In other words, more content does not necessarily mean better search rating. It has to be well optimized content. I've seen so many companies just start cranking out 5 blog posts a month and then get disappointed because the outcome wasn't what they hoped for. They knew nothing about meta-titles, meta descriptions, alt tags, H[element] tags, image compression, site architecture, URL naming conventions, etc. It all works together.

"As far as paying for it goes, you need to analyze who you are against. For example, if you are a bar in New Orleans you can't just pay for "bar in New Orleans" unless you are going to pay more than everyone else and eventually have more hits than the big dogs. You have to figure out the niche markets you want to hit, and determine what key words will direct traffic to you. Like, Gin bar or Stout specialist."

This is not SEO, strictly speaking, but PPC. But the advice more or less true. A broad/generic keyword is going to be more competitive (and more expensive for PPC).