Despite Hoopla over Social Media, Web Searchers Stay Longer

May 1, 2011

If you want your Web site to dominate your competitors, you might want to consider that social media doesn’t enhance your odds as much as other strategies. What works best is an investment in content and search engine optimization (SEO). Ironically, the hype about social media makes this seem like an improbable proposition.

However, a new study shows you’re missing opportunities for growth if you’re too influenced by the social media buzz – investing more in social media than enhancing your Web site with frequent, strong relevant content backed by SEO strategies.

The study by Outbrain shows referrals from user-traffic deliver more results than social media. (The firm, www.outbrain.com, provides services for an impressive array of publishers including content and traffic information.)

Outbrain says users that directly visit your site and surf more of your pages constitute about 66 percent of your visitors’ data.

The firm’s study indicates social media enthusiasts will spend less time on your site – the bounce rate is higher – they visit one page and that’s it. On the other hand, surfers who visit your site based on their key word or phrase-search will visit more of your pages.

To quote from Outbrain’s study:

• While search still reigns supreme in terms of directing traffic to content pages (41% of external referrers), social is gaining share at 11%.
• Of the six content verticals examined, stories in the news, entertainment and lifestyle categories are the most likely to receive traffic from social sources.
• Traffic coming from social media sources has the highest tendency to bounce.
• Readers who go from one content site to another (i.e. USA Today to The Daily Beast) are most likely to be engaged in what they’re reading, presumably because they are already in content consumption mode.
• Facebook delivers a more diverse audience than Twitter.

My sense about the study:  All traffic – social media enthusiasts and content searchers – is welcome. However, Outbrain is right. With all the hype about social media, if you have to choose between the two strategies, it might seem riskier to invest more in your content and search engine optimization. But your ROI will be stronger.

Candidly, that’s my experience, too, as business-performance consultant and publisher of this business portal. Content searchers tend to be more studious and will spend more time looking for content that interests them. The bounce rate for them is insignificant. That enhances your odds for more revenue – whether you’re marketing products or services or depend on display-advertising revenue.

It may seem riskier in the face of the social media hooplan, but focus on providing frequent, relevant content backed by SEO. The social media efforts should be secondary. If you have to make a choice, remember Web sites with current, strong relevant content earn more respect.

From the Coach’s Corner, if you want more specific tips, you might consider the myriad of business-coaching topics in Marketing/Sales.

“If you don’t make a mistake, you never know when you’re right.”

- Actor Robert Ryan (in the movie, House of Bamboo, 1955)

__________

For a complementary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

Will Social Media Take Driver’s Seat in Search?

 

A study shows about one in five Internet users now use social media instead of portals and search for their online navigation. That’s the finding of The Nielsen Company, www.nielsen.com, in an online panel survey of 1800 respondents in Aug. 2009.

“While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure,” wrote Jon Gibs, VP Media Analytics at Nielsen. “And as social media usage continues to increase (unique visitors to Twitter.com increased 959 percent YOY in August), I can only expect this figure to grow.”

What type of Web sites do the respondents use for search?

• 37 percent - search engines
• 34 percent - portals (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, AOL)
• 11 percent - specific sites
• 9 percent - Wikipedia
• 5 percent -  blogs
• 4 percent - Facebook, Myspace, Twitter

(The latter three, totaling 18 percent, are considered social media.)

With vast number of Web sources of information, Gibs indicated Internet users feel the effects of consumer overload.

“Socializers – those who spend 10 percent or more of their online time on social media – feel this effect more than others do,” he wrote. “When asked, 26 percent feel that there is too much information available on the Internet, compared to 18 percent of people who predominantly use portals and just 5 percent of people who primarily use search engines.”

Why this scenario?

“Socializers trust what their friends have to say and social media acts as an information filtration tool,” explained Gibs. “This is key because Socializers gravitate towards and believe what is shared with friends and family. If your friend creates or links to the content, then you are more likely to believe it and like it. And this thought plays out in the data.”

He stated nearly 15 percent of the Socializers trust blogs and 20 percent rely on information posted on message boards.

From the Coach’s Corner, Nielsen reports higher-income urban dwellers tended to be Socializers.

“Nielsen’s online data shows that about half of the U.S. population visited a social networking website in the last year and that number grows every quarter,” said Wils Corrigan, AVP, Research & Development, Nielsen Claritas. “The rising popularity of these sites and the deep engagement consumers have with them has advertisers and marketers asking for more and more detail as to which lifestyles should be targeted for their online advertising and promotions.”

Other findings:

• Facebook users have a largely upscale profile. The top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence were 25 percent more likely to use Facebook than those in the those in the lower third.
• The bottom third segments related to affluence are 37 percent more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.
• Users of Facebook were also much more likely to use LinkedIn, a network geared towards business and professional networking, than those who use MySpace.