Will Twitter/Facebook give your church more visitors than google?

Some A-list bloggers now get more visitors to their blog from Facebook/Twitter than they do from Google.

I wonder if this is already happening with churches that are social-media-focused.  More referral traffic from social networks than from Google... can any church webmasters comment?

Especially considering the potential of an entire congregation sharing and discussing your church's content (videos, podcasts, events, pastor's blog, etc) on Facebook streams and Twitter feeds.

I think a church should invest more in its social networking presence than in its search engine rank on Google.  Would you agree?

- Joe Suh from MyChurch, church social networking

Comments

[Matthew Irvine]

We're not quite there yet, Joe. This month, we've been broken down like this:
- 37% Direct traffic
- 22% Google
- 11% Yahoo
- 5% Facebook
- <1% Twitter

[Mickey]

For the past month:

Direct -- 4,640
Google -- 4,309
Facebook -- 221
Twitter -- 73
Ping.fm -- 24
LinkedIn -- 12

Add up the social media, and we have 330 total -- a far cry from Google.

It's worth mentioning that a good chunk of Twitter users don't use the site -- they use TwitterFon, Tweetdeck, etc - and those show up as direct visits. Still, even if you double the Twitter number it's pretty low.

Another angle to consider is how many people simply get their information from these sites, especially from Facebook. Many people probably log on to Facebook, get their answers, and the move on. That doesn't show up as a hit on our site, but it was great that we had the info out there for them.

It'll be interesting to see how things progress over the next year.

[Joe]

Thanks for sharing data...

Yep, definitely just a small fraction at this point. But it will be interesting to look at these numbers again next year for your 2 churches.

I also wonder if blog sites are just a different breed from church sites. Blogs are inherently social-media focused. Whereas church sites just aren't... yet

[Dave Waters]

The traffic represents two different types of visitors. Is your Church using technology to reach out to the community/ world to draw more people in, or focused on building it's members to do that work. I think Google/ search engine traffic represents potential new members/ believers. Social networking represents(mostly) those who you already have a relationship.

With that perspective in mind, it is equally important to invest in the website's search-ability and social networking.