does anyone know anything about becoming a seo and social media marketer

[sskink]

While SEO marketing is analytical, IMO, anyone who practices it without some grounding in traditional marketing is pretty useless. It's an added skill to a marketing background - and one that's grown to significant importance. Having some knowledge of consumer behavior, direct marketing principles, website design (you don't need to be a designer, but should understand things like eye flow, entry/exit pages, page load times, etc.) and copywriting should all be part of what you bring to the table before getting into SEO.

There are some excellent courses on it (that might cost you $2K). Standards for certification appear to be on the horizon.

[wheretomove2014]

Originally Posted by readytofly

I've seen a few job ads for this
is this a valuable career

SEO is always a valuable skill. But marketing and branding while they appear to be an in-demand talent, always seem to me kind of vague and amorphous. Of course one of the difficulties in the advertising field has always been quantifiable measurements of results. How do you know what you are doing is working, especially when it's the first time you're trying it? It will take quite a while to pinpoint repeated increases in sales caused by X technique under Y circumstances. So...there I think is a lot of BSing going on in the field. Especially by newbies who don't really know what the hell they're doing and just want "in on the game".

Having said that, yes I believe you can make money at it- if you have a good resume and can successfully indicate to clients that you can get results.