In an interesting post, Thomas Baekdal describes how, in just 4 years, the source of the majority of referrals to his site (www.baekdal.com) has shifted from Google to social media sites, like Delicious, Twitter, Facebook and Stumbledupon. In 2005 only 2% of his referrals came from social media sites and 60% came from Google. Now he has 65% coming from social media sites and just 15% from Google.He goes on to discuss the importance of the 'influence' of visitors, how much they interact (i.e how much value they generate) over the pure quantity of visitors to his site - which is something we're all starting to wake up to.
2 comments:
That's very interesting and shows a substantial shift in a short time frame. The value of social media was being highlighted in your Marketing Seminar and this supports that view nicely.
Do you think it will continue to increase in significance?
Yes - I think there are two factors at play here. One is the use of social media tools as a direct replacement for search engines - though I don't see this as the primary driver. The other, more relevant in my view, is the 'push' marketing that social media provides. This is your post, article or Tweet being pushed into the newsfeed (or "social media inbox") of your friends and contacts. This can only grow as social media continues to expand it's boundaries through Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect etc.
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