The ongoing debate about SEO vs. Social Media rages on. There�s a very enlightening article written by Nathan Safranof Conductor on the Search Engine Watch blog positing that, while Social Media does have an important place in the marketer�s toolbox, evidence shows that it�s been�well, shall we say OVER-HYPED?
But let�s face it. The biggest source of leads and sales is still�the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). When people are looking for Massachusetts real estate, they don�t go to LinkedIn or Facebook, or Pinterest, or Twitter. They don�t search LinkedIn for a real estate agent, because they�re not looking for a real estate agent, they�re looking for listings. So they go to Google or Bing and search based on the cities or neighborhoods they want to live in. If they don�t find you, you�re losing sales. That�s just how this works, even if you�re all over the place on Social Media.
One of the interesting facts from the article is that various marketing- and tech-news outlets tend to write about Social Media far more than SEO. To the tune of 4x more on up to 58x more. For that reason, there are probably many of you that are spending hours each day engaging and sharing socially. Yet the numbers show that Social brought in a miniscule amount of traffic and sales compared to search engines. To the tune of 2% vs. 38%. Yeah. Pretty bad, right?
So my point is not to rain on your parade if you�re a big fan of Social Media, and have collected armies of followers, nor is it to say that social engagement isn�t important. It is important, it�s just not as important as the hypesters want it to be. Yet.
