Just yesterday afternoon among conversation about private islands and pirate attacks, my friend Matt Bailey and I got into a conversation about the growing trend of fad marketing in the search world. Whether it's pay-per-blog programs, link baiting tactics or social media, there seems to be a resurgence in the type of "quick and easy success" mentality that was prevalent back when the SEM world was first fleshing itself out as an industry. While I went on to write an article that covered the link baiting side of things, Matt decided to offer up some well-needed perspective on the phenomenon of social media as a marketing tactic.

While Matt's article should be a must-read for anyone in the marketing field, one particular section really stands out in terms of summing up the problem that's appearing in the search marketing world right now.

I have recently heard many give the advice to use social media to increase their site’s popularity. Unfortunately, that is usually the only advice. Social media has quickly become the “flavor of the month” for many marketers, and they have left the tried and true principles of long-term marketing for the fast track of transitory links. This is not the fault of the Web 2.0 darlings; it is the result of the small hysteria that follows any new method of quickly building links to a website.

Matt's article follow along the lines of my own offering today about link baiting and the generalized concept of "fad marketing." There will always be people looking for the quick way to get the job done. The revelation that links mattered led to the creation of link farms, the revelation that links from "good" sites matter led to the creation of link buying networks. Social media and link baiting concepts are simply the latest fad in this area.

As Matt points out, it's not about instant success, it's about understanding how to apply new technologies in a mature way to create long-lasting results.

The traditional target of marketing is the customer, yet how many customers are directly reached through social media marketing? Unless you are trying to reach the tech crowd, social media will be an indirect method of increasing rankings and even further removed from a direct influence on sales and leads.

There's nothing wrong with social networking sites or with including them in your marketing plan. The problem comes about when people see quick, easy success and shift too much of their focus to the medium that produced that success. Just as companies have had to learn that relying solely on organic Google rankings does not a marketing plan make, companies will have to learn that social media must function as a part of a marketing plan, not as the marketing plan itself.