I'm officially confused!

I've taken part in countless courses/webinars/seminars to do with SEO type stuff which all encourage "social proof" - apparently social media is very important when it comes to being noticed.....or is it?

I've taken a month's Social Media "holiday" from a business perspective. Mainly due to actually taking a month off for a rest, and also due to the situation with the dear lady wife's health (which is now thankfully.....hopefully....under control).

I've noticed something odd which appears to go against everything I've been taught thus far!

Until the middle of October, I was posting regularly across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Google My Business.....you name it. At least three posts a week, all different content types (videos, blog links, how-to's....you get the idea). I even paid the book of faces for an advertisement (correctly targeted of course).

Just before I stopped posting, my position on Gooogle was dropping like a very big lump of granite - dramatically, from position 19 in the UK (page 1 locally) to position 50 (around page 3 locally).

Now....I'm aware that the mighty Google released a major update in the summer and it might have been a coincidence that said update hit me around this time, I dunno.

BUT, as I've already mentioned, I've taken a month "off" of social media. I've not posted anything to any of my business accounts for at least three weeks. My Google ranking is improving massively (OK, I'm still only position 30'ish nationally at the moment), and my enquiries and actual confirmed bookings have gone up!


Curiously, I've taken more bookings this November than in previous years (and November is normally very quiet in terms of enquiries for me).

Is there a connection? Is social media REALLY the be all and end all?

I'm genuinely curious, because having to come up with ideas for several posts a week, all formatted and written differently is a real pain in the bottom from where I sit. I'm now thinking a once-weekly gig-log type post will be more than enough just to keep the accounts up to date.

Anyone else seen anything like this?