A combination of both is the best option.

Google looks for social signals too so your social media efforts also have a relevance on your SEO.

SEO is/will be very important, not only on quantitative terms but also on qualitative grounds. Generally speaking , traffic from search engines converts better than any kind of traffic.

Having said that, I would combine both sources. Moreover, after Penguin/Panda updates Google’s algorithm takes into account  the so-called “social signals” to improve your Serps. I’ve seen practical evidence of this.

I’m as dense as wood about SEO (I’ve really been trying to learn SEO strategies recently, but it’s definitely a work in progress), but I’ve had a lot of success with traffic to my blog, Getajobtips.com, by teasing my blog posts on job-related LinkedIn discussion groups. The groups are free to join and free to post in and they drive a ton of traffic to your site, if you pique the interest of the readers with your topic.

@aji-mathew  is this like a plug for your web page?

Thank you very much for the replies all! Greatly appreciate the insight! Will put more of a balance into my efforts!

Thanks again!

I’ve just relaunched my blog about 2 weeks ago. I’ve been focusing on driving traffic w/o the use of seo.

I drive traffic through blogging and community based sites and leveraging the influence of others.

Here’s my four main traffic points:

• Blog commenting (High traffic sites in my niche)
• Content aggregators (BizSugar.com and Scoop.it)
• Social media (Facebook/Twitter) and
• Forums (Warrior Forum, SME)

Here’s the results I’ve gotten so far:

• 1,325 New Unique Visitors
• 159 Facebook Likes
• 41 Facebook Shares
• 70 Retweets
• 12 Google+’s
• 89 BizSugar Votes
• 10 Comments
• 24 New subscribers
• 3 New Relationships with Influencers
• 9 Natural Blog Backlinks

I’ve just begun to release weekly traffic case studies the first of which I’ve just released yesterday: [Weekly Case Study] How I Got 1,325 Unique Visitors, 159 Facebook Likes, 70 Retweets, 89 Sugars?? 

The amount of traffic I’ve gotten to that post today has actually been pretty staggering to me. 

Thanks to social media and some blogging heavy hitters sharing my post with their networks.

It’s amazing and exciting to see how viral and fast free traffic can be when done properly.

Ti

@albertmora  Quality content and social sharing provide plenty of quality backlinks.

@amyhallbiz Thanks a lot Amy.  My traffic has yet to convert to sales.  That’s the code I’m trying to crack now.  Now that I have the traffic formula down I’m working on my sales funnel processes. I’m currently promoting a traffic related affiliate program. I’m in the process of putting together a bonus or two to incentivize sales. 

Short answer: Both.

Long answer:

SEO isn’t what it used to be. It used to consist of some serious link building and keyword stuffing – this had great results. Now you will get penalised for using these practices (rightfully so). Instead you have to create fresh content that get’s ‘voted up’ by peers. Voting up occurs from social shares, leaving comments and other relevant sources linking to you.

Therefore a good online strategy consists of creating content optimised primarily for your customer, and secondly for search engines, then promoting that content with social networks and building a community to get repeat visits.

As a side note to this, traffic from search engines are meant to have a higher conversion rate, this is because they are looking for something specific, instead of being in the mindset of socialising with their friends.

Here is a link to a great talk by Rand at SEOMoz about the state of link building: 
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-death-of-link-building-and-the-rebirth-of-link-earning-whiteboard-friday