Social is a search strategy

Mashable:

“Sixteen months ago we received the same number of monthly referrals from search as social. Now 40% of traffic comes from social media,” Scott Havens, senior vice president of finance and digital operations at The Atlantic Media Company, said in a phone conversation ahead of his on-stage interview at our Mashable Connect conference in Orlando, Fla. last weekend. “Truly [our writers] are not really thinking about SEO anymore. Now it’s about how we can spin a story so that it goes viral.”

Of course, writing for social is an SEO strategy, as social is an increasingly strong signal in search.

Incidentally, I’m leading an SEO for Journalists course with journalism.co.uk. You might want to come. 🙂