If tech media coverage frequency were to serve as a barometer of the relative utility of the digital channels available to marketers, one could be forgiven for concluding that search's value pales in comparison to the much-covered social media.
An analysis of "SEO" vs. "social media" coverage on the top two major tech blogs, while not the most scientific study ever done, shows that social media was covered 4x more frequently on TechCrunch and 58x more frequently on Mashable.
This matters because, as any first year poly-sci. student knows, media coverage impacts public opinion. In this case, that means impacting marketer's organizational decision-making such as budget and resource investment. And, as many a frustrated SEO practitioner knows, even if youyourself have things straight, the VP or CMO at the top of the food chain who likely controls the purse strings is often the most susceptible to the tech media's influence.
Media Saturation of Social Dominates Mindshare and Budgets
To add to the "how much" coverage factor, the "what is being said" is another variable influencing public opinion. To a certain extent, the tech media has touted social media as a magic bullet, promising it will change the very fabric of how we market online. When it comes to online retail in particular, we have been told that social will change the way people shop, presumably because recommendations from friends carry more weight than results from a search engine.
Given these dual factors putting downward pressure on public opinion, now is a good time to check in on where social should, in fact, be positioned in the marketer's toolbox.
We know that measurement of the current traffic social media drives to websites isn't a definitive indicator about its future utility. But it gives us a finger-in-the-wind check as to where social stands relative to other drivers of inbound traffic.
With that, let's look at some data.
Data: Social Drives Far Less Traffic than Search
First, from Adobe's analysis of "�billions of visits from 500 retail websites during the holiday season": only 2 percent of visits come from social, while 34 percent come from search: