Are social networks can be relied upon as the primary source of traffic?

It seems that some people started to utilize social networks as the source of traffic. That is wise decision because not all of us can deal with frequent Google Update. However, not all people are good in SEO or have money to invest in SEO. So, people who’re always get bad luck in finding traffic from search engines now have an alternative.

The question, are social networks can be relied upon as the primary source of traffic? (When I say primary, then it’s really your 1st source of traffic.) If yes, what kind of strategy you’ll use to drive traffic from social networks especially Facebook? And do you think this is what a lot of people would do in the future?

My personal opinion:
Even if people now started to utilize social networks to drive traffic, I think it’s hard for social networks to replace the domination of search engine. People habits when searching of something is still by go to search engine and visit what they find on there. I think social networks can replace search engine as traffic source if only they can think the way to make people go to social networks when trying to finding something.

How about you? Share your opinion here!

I think search engine is still the primary source of traffic for most websites. Even if I'm a social media user, I don't go to social media websites to look for products or services because it's going to take longer than it's going to take me when I use a search engine. Also, on the subject of finding products and services, I can count on search engines to take me to more credible reviews. However, that doesn't mean promoting on social media networks is not important because there are a lot of people on these networks and surely, there is a huge potential business on them.

Yeah having your own network of people who likes to get updates from you would make your work easier. I usually speak of marketing strategy which works for your business even if Google dies tomorrow. We should establish our own network of website which give us continuous profit without having good visibility on Google or any other search engine and utiliation of social networking websites like twitter and Facebook are the ideal option towards that direction.

Social networking websites are playing vital role to get good traffic from various sites and countries, twitter, facebook, linkedin as well as google plus are very important sources for your business and brand promotion.

They are great sources of traffic however people often find themselves having to use underhand tactics to make them work.

For others they work quite well without. It depends how you approach each.

i think social media is another source of calling money back..

Social networks can give a large amount of exposure and drive lots of traffic to your site quickly.

Search engines take longer to get traffic but will give steady and targeted traffic making you more income.

However, it's best not to rely on only one source of traffic. Google could make big changes to its algorithm and cause you to lose most of your search engine traffic.

Also, you should go where your clients go which is both to the search engines and to social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

If people who don't know you, find your business on the search engines, then see that it is popular among other Facebook or Twitter users, they will trust you more and are more likely to do business with you.

for some cases only, i agreed social media/network can be source of great traffic instead of search engine.. for example you can gather you facebook like/fan via page or group, then you can build your trust and brand name,your facebook fan will recommend you to other facebook user and your network/fans will grow up slowly

Definitely not! However we can get a tons of traffic from Social networking site but it won't help to rank our Blog in Search Engine, therefore it must not be your main source of traffics, Search engine must be.

At the minute mine is but am working on gaining more hits from search engines, main reason why I ended up on here for that purpose, already gained some good knowledge off members here to move off from that source onto a more interest based source of traffic with the search engines

If you have a good knowledge about SEO perhaps you don't need these social networks because you might be getting a decent traffic from SE but Social network is a good place where we can get a regular visitor.