Weeding Through the Social Media Hype

I love social media, and there is huge power in services like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. But I noticed with my business that the majority of traffic -- and therefore value for my company -- still comes through more "traditional" web channels such as search engines, referrals from other websites, and direct website visits.

At best, I see 10 percent of my traffic driven by social media sites.

While these results will vary for every business, a recent Demandbase study shows that company websites are the number one source of new sales leads, and that the corporate website is seven times more effective than social media at generating sales. These survey results are pretty similar to my results.

eMarketer estimated that 20.6 million US adults will access Twitter at least once a month this year. Those are amazing numbers. And on top of that are many application developers coming up with tools to be able to take better advantage of the information that streams through Twitter. The development of better Twitter "listening" tools, and the adoption of these tools, will no doubt make the user experience better and more useful.

But we are still a long way off from achieving this goal -- and Twitter still has a strange manner of acquiring information. The structured, detailed, in-depth information we get from search tools like Google and from our own websites still wins the day.

So get on Twitter and watch for interesting new tools to help you take advantage of social media. But don't forget that your own website which should still be the crown jewel of your online strategy. That means working constantly to keep your content fresh and relevant, and checking in regularly with your users to ensure that your site's messaging and functionality make sense to them.