SmallBusinessNewz

The holidays really showed just how big of an impact social media is having on businesses, retailers in particular. Competitive intelligence agency Experian Hitwise is sharing some data it collected regarding the impact of traffic sources to retail sites.

Social networking has become th most popular activity online and because of that, visits to the retail category represented 13% of all US Internet visits in December, according to the firm.

"As the social networking audience continues to grow, the category has become a major source of traffic for retailers, surpassing categories such as Rewards and Directories, comprised of comparison shopping tools and affiliate websites," says Hitwise's Heather Dougherty. "In December, the share of upstream traffic to the Retail 500 custom category increased 37% as compared to the previous year, the highest year-over-year increase among major traffic sources."

"One common question regarding the relationship between social networks and retailers is how to be sure that the traffic coming from social networks is not just a by-product of their popularity," says Dougherty. "For many users, there is tendency for visitors to either always have a tab open logged into a social network or returning frequently to check for updates. One measure of success is the sheer number of followers or fans, etc. along with the amount of interaction and dialogue taking place."

Social media's popularity isn't going to be going away anytime soon. If anything, it's only going to grow, and it's going to become more mobilized as more people access social networks from mobile devices on a regular basis, and this means while they're on the go.

It's early in 2010 and you have a while to plan for the next holidays season. Perhaps if you aren't already, you should focus some of your time this year preparing for social media traffic. It just may benefit you in the meantime as well.