I’ve read a few things here and there about social traffic and how ‘important’ it is to have. I also have a personal blog and the social traffic is through the roof, however, the big question is, does any of the social traffic really matter?
Take StumbleUpon traffic, for example. If you’re a Stumbler, you know as much as any other Stumbler, you’re killing time and looking for things of interest. This usually doesn’t involve running around spending a dime, it’s just about finding funny pictures or things of interest without having to put much thought into it. I can honestly say I’ve never spent a single penny on a site I have stumbled on. I might have referenced something I found on my blog, but I can’t see any financial benefit that this type of traffic might bring.
Now let’s look at Digg traffic. I will admit I’m not a big Digg fan, mostly because I’ve read about how a group of power Digg users control what gets pushed up and what doesn’t so I don’t view it as as much a world view as I do a group of users view. The results are pretty much the same thing though, it’s either political, funny, shocking or just overall newsworthy, not financially beneficial to anyone. I did have one blog post that someone dugg and there was about a week of traffic that came from it, all which opens that one page, looks at the content, and then moves on.
I’ve also blogged some time ago about Facebook Ads and how poor they performed. Granted, this was millions of new users ago and they’ve probably put more work into their ad platform, but what are you looking for when you login to Facebook? Something to buy or pay for? I would say 75% of the time I login to my account, the ad I see you can see to the right. Yep, it’s a mugshot of Matt Baker, who works for us. Just seems like a big waste to show that ad over ads that might actually convert for serious advertisers. (not that I don’t enjoy seeing Baker’s peace sign) As I said before, other than branding, I still can’t see a huge benefit in running ads on the Facebook system.
I would love to see a study that compares the value of a social media site to a large company with thousands of employees, and the company spends millions of dollars in advertising with that social site. Then determine how much employee time is wasted on that social site during a typical workday. Total both sides of the study and see what the true benefit to the company really is. What if it was found that social websites are a proven way to cost companies millions of dollars in lost revenues because their employees spend more time being social than being productive?
I’m not here to say social sites are worthless, I’m just asking if they really matter when it comes to paying the bills. If you have a site that averages a thousand uniques per month without any social traffic and you convert 5% of the traffic, and then after bumping your traffic up another thousand uniques of social visits, would that translate into the same number of conversions? I’ve searched and haven’t really found much by way of real life examples or data to prove it’s worth the time, so if you are reading this and know of a good study or two, please post a link or any real life situations you might have been involved with.
10 comments ↓
WHOA, I didn’t know Facebook was pimping me out in their advertisements! NOT COOL!
So true Ron… not really a fan of social networking because of the amount of time involved in “socializing”. I prefer to do that type of socializing over a cold beer while holding a bar up.
Okay, off again to be productive.. lol
I do like the social sites, but I agree with you on the advertising with facebook, that it’s not very effective. The platform idea is pretty neat, but it doesnt produce results. They need to cut the cost by about 90% for it to be effective. Im a big fan of linkedin but again Im against the ad system.
The only value I see from sites like Digg or Stumble is if you publish something “diggworthy” or “thumbs-up-able,” you will see a spike traffic….and that can be good if you’re hosting banners or something where an advertiser is paying you for impressions. I don’t think anyone who is stumbling or who was reffered by Digg would ever stop to click an ad, though…I know I haven’t.
Facebook should try something revolutionary in regards to their ads. Here they have all of these users; millions and millions of regular visitors….yet they still haven’t figured out the best way to leverage that traffic.
As Matt says, Stuble Fumble and Slick Digg are useless when you are not the link bait guy who has something interesting to say what is worth to get bookmarked from various IPs. I would say they steal your direct traffic in the end. When you Digg this post youve made here for example “Does Social Traffic Matter?” the Digg bookmark will be on one not the linkworth blog.
BTW,
when i look in my traffic stats for Digg´ed posts the traffic coming from Digg is the worst ive ever seen.
English Traffic: 53.33%
Proxy Traffic: 6.67%
Hits in 120 per day
Clicks: 8 per day
Nice productivity isnt it?
I mean this is target traffic and believe me every little link is tracked on my page.
That means 120 people clicked the link on Digg which leads to my page and they generated 8 clicks?? When you calculate a normal 1:500 conversion, you have to wait 62 days until youll get a sale from Digg traffic. Jesus, Chinese traffic trades are more productive than this.
And believe me there are better ways to get lots of traffic when it comes just to the topic impressions.
Simply buy huge ammounts unfiltered traffic which is really cheap 1000hits/$3,99 send it to a satellite blog, filter it and shoot it on your page where you sell ad spots per impressions. i bet youll make 10 times more money than this stupid social bookmarking.
Just my two cents…
Sven speaks! I love it…couldn’t agree more.
I would say that Social Media is worth it for the inbound link back to your site, however, with so many outbound links from these social sites, combined with the overused rel=”nofollow” I am left to wonder if the link is even worth anything.
I think it probably really depends on your site. If the social platform is driving traffic to a fun site that isnt just pushing product, it would probably do okay when it comes to repeat visits, and possibly conversions. If the site is just pushing product, it probably wont do well at all.
I tested facebook with 100$ and ask for USA , CANADA, France.
In the and the total of amount generated is 0.1252$
I advertised the same website with 100$ in an other CPC platforme and I won more than 300$.
is it good?
I suspect that many people use these social networks not so much to get traffic, but more to obtain backlinks to their sites. A number of social media sites have a high ranking of PR5 or over, and aren`t `nofollow` either.
Content clicks NEVER convert the same as search clicks for the obvious reason that someone actively searching for something is far more likely to be ready to buy than someone who clicks out of curiosity.
The reason Social Networking site advertising does not convert is that no Social Networking sites are properly targeting ads to relevant content.
The bad news is Pay Per Click programs such as Google AdWords are intentionally diluting the quality search traffic they sell advertisers – and showing their end users less relevant ads because they make more money that way!
Social Networking sites could use data mining to offer their users content useful to selecting products and services and sell relevant ads adjacent to that content. THAT will convert BETTER than search.
The only question is when will a Social Networking site finally do it and which one will it be. See the link in this comment for additional information and to express your own opinions on this idea.
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