When comparing social media traffic to other forms of traffic, such as search engine, the numbers typically are going to look rather bleak. While you’ll hopefully see a spike in number of visitors and pageviews, that will often be accompanied by higher bounce rates, lower pageviews per visitor, and a lower average time on the site. With stats like this many bloggers wonder if social media traffic is even worth the time and effort.
Despite the tendency of many social media visitors to quickly exit your site and move on to the next one, there are still some very convincing reasons why you should care about social media and why it is worth your time.
1. It’s Free
Unless you’re paying for a consultant or a link bait specialist (both can be good options), marketing your website with social media is free. It will cost you some time, but that pales in comparison to the value of the traffic that you can get in return. There are countless ways to market a website or blog. Just about all of them involve spending money (which isn’t a bad thing), and of the ones that don’t involve money, the vast majority of them are a complete waste of time. I’ve never tried any other type of free marketing that brought even 1% of the results I’ve gotten with social media at my primary blog. Most bloggers are on a tight, or non-existent, budget when it comes to marketing. If this is the case, social media is for you.
2. Quick Results
Building a successful website takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Search engine rankings, for instance, can take years to build in a competitive niche. On the other hand, with social media you can develop content and be seen by thousands of visitors within the same day. For this reason, social media is a great option for getting a new website or blog noticed right away .
3. It’s Flexible
There are so many different social media websites that just about every imaginable niche is covered in one way or another. There are social news sites, bookmarking sites, and general networking sites. Whatever your needs and your audience, there should be an option to use social media for your benefit.
Also, you’re not stuck to using the same social media sites over and over. If you’re not getting results in one place there’s usually other options that you can try out.
4. It Gets Easier with Time
If you’re new to blogging and social media and you feel like everyone else is getting traffic but you, understand that it takes some time and effort, but it will get easier. Once you have established a bit of a reader base and you’ve hopefully attracted some social media users to your blog, it will be much easier for you to get votes and ultimately get more exposure. The more you use social media the more you will understand about how it works and how users will respond.
5. It Will Lead to Other Valuable Sources of Traffic
Although visitors from social media sites may be less responsive than other types of visitors, success with social media will likely increase the number of inbound links you receive. Links will boost your search engine rankings and they’ll also drive click-through traffic your way. Both are generally high quality traffic sources.
6. Building Links with Social Media is Safer than Buying Links
If you plan to cut out the need for social media by purchasing links from other sites, you’re running the risk of being penalized or banned by Google. For some, this is a risk worth taking, but in most cases I would strongly discourage taking this chance. Personally, I focus on building links for my primary blog through the combination of content and social media.
7. Social Media Users are Predictable
The whole concept or link bait or Digg bait wouldn’t even be possible if social media users were unpredictable. But the truth is you can usually have a good idea of what is likely to draw a response and what is not. This will come with time, and of course there is no 100% guarantee. However, once you know a social media audience pretty well, you can cater content to their preferences with a pretty high success rate. What you learn about social media can easily be duplicated to your other blogs or to serving clients.
8. It Doesn’t Require as Much Time as You Might Think
Personally, I use social media every day, but on a very limited basis. If you think that you have to spend all day on Digg or Stumbling pages to get some results of your own, you may be surprised. With the right approach you can get fantastic results with just a few hours per week on social media sites. To be a top Digg user you’ll need more time than that, but being a top Digg user isn’t necessary to draw social media traffic.
9. Branding Through Social Media is Possible
One of the great benefits to the exposure that you can get through social media is the result it has on the branding of your blog. Branding is key to building a success blog in the long-term, and social media is an excellent, free option for helping visitors to see your blog in a particular light. (For more, see my post at ProBlogger A Blogger’s Guide to Branding with Social Media.)
10. Links Can Help Your Search Engine Rankings Rise Quickly
Earlier I mentioned to social media can provide instant results. Well, in addition to sending loads of traffic directly, the links that result from social media success can get your new posts ranking very well with search engines almost immediately. It’s not uncommon for me to see a very respectable number of visitors from Google searches to a brand new post that just drew a lot of links through social media. While it will take a while to build search engine rankings as a whole, it is possible to create specific posts to rank well right away.
11. It Allows You to Leverage Your Existing Traffic
Do you already have a solid blog with a steady flow of traffic? If so, chances are you could leverage that traffic to draw even more visitors with social media. You may want to use voting buttons on your posts or ask some of your readers and friends to give you a vote occasionally.
12. Some Visitors Will Be Targeted
The biggest knock on social media traffic is that it’s not targeted, and that is typically true. However, visitors from niche social media sites can be very highly targeted, and on top of that, a portion of visitors from general news sites will be targeted as well. For example, if you get 25,000 visitors from a post on the Digg front page, maybe only 5,000 of them will have much of an interest in your site. Still, that’s a quick 5,000 visitors that you wouldn’t have had without social media. Just because a smaller percentage of the visitors will stick doesn’t mean that they are irrelevant.
13. The Future of the Internet is Social
Social media and social networking aren’t going away any time soon. The major players and the types of social sites may change of the course of time, but this is a trend that online marketers need to adjust to. Without finding ways to build a website or blog through social media you could be left behind by your competitors.
Originally Published August 10th, 2008
Usefulness of Social networking given in nutshell
A very useful list of benefits. Thanks. You forgot to mention that in general, bloggers are very nice people
usable list! increase my knowledge ’bout social network.
thanks
I agree with some of what you are saying here, although it is very easy to waste an awful lot of time for very little benefit on many of these social networking sites.
For me, the long-term benefits of substantial amounts of traffic to link bait posts are well worth the effort, but I miss the boat as often as I hit it
Using the right site to attract the right sort of traffic is also vital
I can’t agree with most of your points at all. Sorry. I laugh whenever I see SM geeks try to rationalize SSM with the best foot forward. Don’t get me wrong though, as I love to read it.
I think every article I have read about this exact same topic always says something like “free”…. but it takes time. Not that much time though. LOL
In my book, TIME is the most expensive item and drain and resource hog on a business.
Also; most all articles point out the se boosts with links ,etc. Too bad these so-called links are slowly but surely getting devalued all the time. What will people do then? Maybe build good sites? Oh no.
Real estate,
I completely agree that it’s possible to waste a lot of time. That’s why it’s important to have a plan (one that works) and to stick to it. There’s probably more people wasting time with social media than there are actually benefiting from it. But it doesn’t have to be that way, it’s just poor planning and execution in my opinion.
Doug,
You don’t have to agree, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. However, I know for a fact that social media does work for link building and improving search rankings because I’ve seen it firsthand for over a year with consistent results. You’re right, not all the links you get this way will be high quality, but some will.
I agree with you that time is a very precious and valuable asset, but for those who are just getting started with a blog, time is probably more readily available than money. That should change with time as the blog/website is built to be more successful.
[…] 13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is Worth Your Time - Unless you’re paying for a consultant or a link bait specialist (both can be good options), marketing your website with social media is free. It will cost you some time, but that pales in comparison to the value of the traffic that you … […]
This is a good post that should reduce some self imposed barriers that people have regarding social interaction online.
I would like to point out that link building in social platforms for the sake of link building is a bad practice that leaves an ugly footprint that Google will slap.
Focus on content and communities and your link building will happen as a natural result.
Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin
A very well-written article that outlines the potential impact of SMM on site traffic and promotion. I think the most important point to remember is the final one - the future of the Internet is social, indeed.
We’ve been seeing this movement gaining momentum for some time and the tidal wave will surely be upon us soon, if it isn’t already. Those that are already comfortable with SMM will certainly have a decided advantage moving forward. Long-term business success is about building relationships and rapport…SMM gives people a medium to accomplish those goals, but on a much larger scale.
Good stuff, but one should remember to only focus on a couple social media sites for marketing. If you try and be everywhere, you’re going to lose something very important - frequently providing good quality content. Yeah you want traffic, but what good does it do you if they’re only there for a second or two and leave. Focus more on having a sticky website with good quality content where visitors would actually want to stay on your website and buy a product or click on an ad. So far I’m only focusing my social media marketing efforts on digg, stumbleupon, and mybloglog.
Webpreneur,
I agree that you should only focus on a few social media sites at a time. For most people Digg is a waste of time. If you don’t get to the front page it will send next to nothing, unlike StumbleUpon.
@Steven I can see how Digg can be a waste if they only focus on being on the front page all the time, but if they learn how to harness the power of Digg and the other ways you can create buzz for your website(s) with it, then I think you can get something out of it
I use Digg mostly because of its shouting feature; add a bunch of friends constantly, reply back to their shouts, send a few friendly messages here and there, “Digg” the links they send you, leave comments, and every once in a while, shout them up about your latest article (if u have a blog) or your updated website, asking them to check it out and asking them to shout your message to their friends as well, it does wonders for traffic, especially if you’re a newcomer
some people might see it as spam, but it’s not, Digg decided to have this feature for a reason, if you are constantly “shouting” people, then yeah that would be spam, but if you’re interative and use it once in a while, it can be a very powerful advertising medium for your website(s) with no costs!
After creating a “business” profile on Facebook, I could not be happier with the results. I log into Facebook in the morning, give nods and winks to “friends”, update my info and then get to work. I don’t count on Social Networking being my main source of clients, but it sure has increased traffic to my site. I am completely sold!
We have found that social media marketing can be more effective than most other digital channels, including Search PPC. We have some examples of our social media campaign results on http://www.agency2.co.uk
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Traffic to my site has increased and i hope this will keep up.
Up next: 13 ways to keep those visitors in?
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Great article - It is important to point out that social media traffic with time will convert better then it does today. Many people lose faith in the social media marketing because they see no results. Social takes lots of time in order to build a reputation and for people to trust you.
[…] 13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is Worth Your Time by Steven of Traffickd. […]
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Thanks for the tips. The key is niche sites, and SU is working pretty good for me as well.
Loving this post. I feel so good about myself now that I know I havent been wasting too much time “playing” online!
Social media is surely a boon for the newbies in the net zone. It has never been as easy as this. But one should have a clear plan before getting into the social media circle. For a wrong strategy could backfire and can also affect one’s business.
[…] As loyal readers know, social media remains a fascination, if not an actual marketing tool, for me. I’ve seen various arguments for and against Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and sundry other sites. But the folks at Traffika offer a compelling argument on the overall importance of using social media marketing. […]