82% increase in social media use!!!

According to a Nielsen report, social media use has increased 82% during the last year! This is thanks to the fact that the average time spent on social media per month has moved from 3 hours to 5.5 hours. Amazing stuff, ah?

Read this quote from a CNN Money article regarding this:

"This Nielsen report establishes social media as a trend that is not only here to stay, but one that is growing at a mind-boggling magnitude," stated Bloggerwave Director Ulrik Thomsen. "The findings more than validate Bloggerwave's business model of leveraging social media for marketing opportunities -- a business model I am proud to admit we developed years ahead of the trend."

Ladies and gentlemen: Social media is the future!

It's Facebook time

These are good days for Facebook. The social media giant is near to reach 400 millions users around the world and the promising future of social media gives Facebook a lot of good reasons to smile today.

The new trend in terms of optimization seems to be oriented towards the SMO (Social Media Optimization) and it's going to be interesting to see how SMO will play along the lines of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Take the following note from this article I read today in Min Online:
"Just as “SEO” became the key to publishers riding the search engine ecosystem, “Social Media Optimization" may be the buzzword for the next few years as more and more of us discover news and information through friends on Facebook and Twitter."

In addition to this trend, Facebook is now generating more online traffic than Yahoo and Google' Buzz is just a response to accomodate the company to the impact social media is generating on the Internet.

Keeping on mind all this, Facebook is starting to set up the pace on the Web and when a company does that, there are many reasons to be happy and confident about the future.

How social media is affecting online traffic

According to an analysis carried out by the Palo Alto firm Gigya, "Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites."

This interesting note appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle website.

Another part of the article I found interesting was this:

"...David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy for the digital marketing firm 360i of New York, said the importance of search engines isn't going away.

"But there's always been one downside to search," he said. "Consumers only spend about 5 percent of their time online searching and the other 95 percent of the time at the destination. Social media is quickly accounting for a large percentage of that 95 percent. Google's biggest acquisitions, DoubleClick and YouTube, have been all about playing a big role in the rest of consumers' Web usage."..."

It's going to be interesting to see the evolution of this trend.

Should social media drive traffic to your site?

I came across two opinions about social media that are quite different.

The first one goes like this:

"The point of using social media as part of a marketing or PR strategy for a small business is to drive traffic and generate sales." Peter Shankman, founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, a boutique marketing and PR strategy firm in New York City. Read full article HERE.

The second one goes like this:

"Facebook marketing is not about driving traffic to your web site. Keep Facebook users on Facebook." Online Marketing blog. Read full article HERE.

So, my question is this: Should social media drive traffic to your site or not?