In an effort to answer the above question, Nielsen conducted some in-depth research – including an online panel survey of 1,800 participants fielded in August 2009.
The finding: people are increasingly using social media tools to make purchasing decisions.
Most people still use search engines to find things but in the future we will no longer search for products and services; rather they will find us via social media.
I see search engines as presenting us with a broad view of options but our decisions will ultimately be influenced by our peers.
Why? As we all know, people care more about what their friends think than what an algorithm does.
This is already happening on a very small scale and will increase with the adoption of social tools.
What does this mean to your business?
It means you should be an active participant in your ecosystem. As I mentioned before, focus most of your marketing efforts in creating relationships, bonding with your audience and giving the best possible brand experience.
If you don’t know where to start with social media, we wrote about a few good resources to get your foot in the door and craft a social media strategy. It also important that you treat this as a continuous business activity, social media isn’t a campaign; it’s a new way to do business.
UPDATE: Recent findings suggest Facebook is the most valuable source of traffic. From Mashable:
According to their findings, Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.
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