There has been much talk about the power of sites like Facebook and Twitter to help grow a company, but one expert says social media visitors aren’t "worth as much as a penny."

Writing at his SEOBook website, Aaron Wall says that while there is much buzz around the power of being mentioned on a social media site like Facebook and Twitter, it typically lacks value. Wall says that being mentioned in a more prominent review site has much more power than "a 140 character recommendation."

In that same concept, Wall says just because something goes viral it doesn’t mean it’s going to automatically translate into sales. He notes that the company Blendtec became a viral sensation with its Will it Blend? Videos and grew the company 10-fold after millions of views – something that can just as easily be done through proper search engine optimization (SEO).

"Many successful professional SEOs use SEO to increase the value of websites by that in less than a year, and have done so over and over again," he writes. "With SEO you can create a million dollar business from scratch in about a year’s time, largely because search has so much implied intent…so you don’t need a huge traffic stream to monetize if you pick the right markets."

Last Saturday Facebook allowed users to change their username on their profile page giving them a "vanity URL" for the site, which some say will increase the search engine optimization (SEO) for individuals and companies that use the service. Over the weekend 5.75 million users registered usernames on the site – about 3 percent of the total Facebook population.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.