• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 18, 2009

Marketing agency Oneupweb has repositioned the company to "practice what we preach" by touting the benefits of combining search and social media.

Along with the revamped site, the company plans to release a position paper titled "The Fusion of Search and Social Media." In the paper, the digital marketing company states that "marketers need to change how they look at search, or risk loss of sales and market share."

Oneupweb has made the combined efforts of "social media" and "search" its mantra to demonstrate that the strategy works. Benefits gained from integrating search into marketing--whether optimizing video posts on YouTube or incorporating Flickr and Twitter campaigns--range from higher organic click rates on search engine queries to more traffic on sites, higher conversion rates and better relationships with customers, according to Carly Desmet, director of marketing at Oneupweb, Traverse City, Mich.

"We have rebranded the company to say social is no longer separate from search marketing," she said. "We have a wholehearted commitment and a new understanding on how it works."

Today, user-generated properties are commonly found at the top of search results. Research firm eMarketer estimates that advertisers will spend $210 million by 2012--up from $40 million in 2008--to reach businesses through online social networks. Users want to combine search capabilities for photo-sharing sites, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs, social networks and more.

Oneupweb's position paper also provides a timeline on how search and social media have changed, from the blog in the search engine results page and the tweet on Twitter about a special promotion to must-see videos and top-ranking Google search queries.

The company said it's no longer enough to optimize the Web site. With user-generated blogs, forums, videos, photo-sharing sites, social networking sites and others growing in popularity and importance, businesses need to take an approach that incorporates all to gain the measurable return on investment and see results.