SocialMediaExaminer just released the results of a survey with nearly 4,000 answers from different social media marketers coming from all over. There were no qualifications for the survey; only that the people who answered worked with social media marketing on some level. I say this only to point out that there is no gold club membership for social media marketers and that no platinum or diamond level group voted exclusively to announce this data. This was the real deal.
Social Media Marketers would rather focus on SEO and content strategies than build a PPC Campaign and invest via a pay-per-click strategy. Search Engine Land broke it down by percentage, but it's basically populating Facebook and Google+ as much as possible:
Going forward, 68 percent of respondents said they're planning to increase their SEO efforts - a number that's down slightly from 71 percent in 2011. Only nine percent this year said they have no plans to use SEO.
Only 43 percent of the social media marketers surveyed say they're planning to increase their use of PPC advertising.
Consider me part of the 43 percent. PPC isn't for everybody, but it's not about who it's for. It's about what the campaign is about. Honestly if that high of a percentage isn't using PPC then doesn't that mean the social media marketer who doesn't is just in the content creation business?