moTi - 4:40 pm on Oct 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

I've noticed that SMM and SEO people are often isolated from each other.

not without reason. in many job advertisements i browse through, meanwhile the required skills are seo/sem combined with smm. i think that's a mistake on the part of the company. they look for an online marketing allrounder, but in fact, most of all people aren't competent in both areas.
why? well, it's like marketing and sales - or programming and web design. two very different areas if you look closely at it. you need a very different set of skills to be successful in one of those fields. sem is like the geeky technical and strategical back-end with mostly one-way communication whereas smm is the front-end that's all about social competence and directly interacting with the customer. so, two completely separate areas really. two different kinds of job.

very inspiring article btw.