Recommendations from other consumers might be the holy grail for marketers right now,  but be smart – don’t throw all your PR and marketing basics out with the social media bathwater.  “The traffic that these social media sites provide is very much like a sugar high. There is a flurry of traffic that leaves as quickly as it starts, and sometimes there is less of a result than desired,” writes Matt Bailey at Site Logic

Once again analytics proves it worth: take a look at these figures from an interesting analysis Matt did.

The traffic was compared by source, engagement and  conversions

Search was the clear winner in terms of overall traffic.  But when looking into time on site, page views per visitor and the bottom line – conversions – you see that it’s not about how many people come to your site, it’s about what they do when they get there.

Links from other sites and blogs with genuine recommendations are the ones bringing home the bacon.

Bailey points out that this research is about using social sites to build links that wlll drive traffic to your site, not about using social social sites to build community and enngagement.

 “This research, though limited, confirms my suspicions. Social Media provides a “sugar-high” approach to building links, much less an online business. It provides a lot of traffic, very fast. However the vast majority of that traffic is not engaged, rarely stays for more than a few seconds and can sometimes be rude. If page views are the goal for a site, social media will provide a lot of one-off page views, but rarely more than that. Comparatively, good external links provide traffic that will view multiple pages – typically many more than social media traffic,“says Bailey.

“Mounting evidence suggests that Digg traffic in particular is less like networking with like-minded individuals at a social event and more like getting attacked by a pack of wild dogs, who leave nothing of value in their wake, other than lessons learned on closing comments and crashed servers,” says Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0.

How does this affect your approach to Social Media?

1. Understand what social media is and what it does/doesn’t do
2. Get very familiar with the audience of each site 
3. Apply basic marketing and PR data to your online campaigns
4. Don’t just fly by the seat of your pants. Use your analytics software to track and evaluate your traffic, so you can see which content and which links are affecting your conversions

A successful online PR campaign has to be based on a content strategy that will deliver real business results. You can’t pay the bills with a storm of social media traffic that floods your website and then leaves.