Using Twitter To Double Your Traffic?

[Evan]

Hello Forum Members! I've posted another blog entry on Twitter and how some people are using it to double their site traffic.

On EvanCarmichael.com, Twitter has recently become the number four source of traffic. It’s Google, then Yahoo!, then AOL, and then Twitter. Twitter sends more traffic to my site than Ask, Bing / MSN, Wikipedia, Digg, and Facebook. What’s also interesting is that Twitter visitors view 40% more pages and spend 73% more time on my site than visitors from Google. I don’t have any numbers on how well the traffic converts, which is typically a problem for social media referrals, but the growth in the Twitter numbers is impressive nonetheless.

I use TechCrunch, ShoeMoney, Chris Brogan, and Daily SEO Blog as examples - most of them have Twitter as their #2 referrer of traffic after Google.

I'd love your thoughts and to hear how you're using Twitter to generate traffic:

http://www.evancarmichael.com/blog/2009 ... niversity/

[Evan]

A quick follow up question to my last post - does anybody actually keep track of their traffic from Twitter? Is it sending you more traffic than some of the search engines?

[Trent Brownrigg]

I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.

[David Hurley]

Hi Evan,

I am not systematically using Twitter to generate traffic, but if I were, I think it would be easy to test conversion rates by pointing my tweets to a product review web page that links through to a product purchase page. The page would be set up exclusively to test Twitter traffic.

I'd replace the URL link in my tweets with a tracking code, and then place another bit of tracking code on the "thank you page" to see how many Twitter users land on my review page and how many of them go through the sales funnel and emerge on the thank you page...

[Evan]

Great feedback guys!

Trent, you've inspired me to do a post on conversion from Twitter traffic - It will be interesting to see how it compares to the other social media sites as well as direct or search engine traffic.

David, the issue is that you can't control where the Twitter traffic comes from very often. If it's your own posts then you can but most of the bloggers get Twitter traffic from other people posting the blog posts or articles on Twitter which makes it difficult to track because it's not going to a specific landing page.

[WebBizIdeas.com]

Hi Evan,

Our company's CEO has been trying to convince me forever to use Twitter more as well. My initial reaction to Twitter can not be summed up better than what Trent said, the traffic is weak...same as Digg.com.

But I am also going to put it to the test and will report back on traffic, leads, and sales that come from Twitter over 2009. I would be interested to see other reports from forum users on conversions.

MY TWO CENTS:

Social Media (like Twitter) works great if you can influence others. When promoting our clients we don't build awesome social media accounts in hopes of driving traffic, but we create a reason for people with popular social media accounts (like twitter) to promote the company; and I am not talking about paying them but just providing them a reason to want to talk about the company.

[WebBizIdeas.com]

Hi,

I am not sure if I posted something similar to this already, but I think it is important to post it anyway. Many people ask me, "As an average Small Business Owner how can I use social media marketing effectively." Since this topic is about the fastest growing social media site Twitter I think it is good to go over this.

I created this images to show how social media marketing should work for an average small business owner:



Step 1: Create & publish relevant content, or link bait that links back to internal pages of your site.

Step 2: Influence aggregators & distributors of information to link to your useful content.

Step 3: Convince socializers to inform their large network of social media users (like Twitter) about this great resource he/she just found.

Remember, you want to influence the influencers, not they try to become the influencer overnight. Too many companies fall into the trap on trying to build 1,000's of "friends" on social media sites instead of influencing the already popular social media users.

There is nothing wrong with becoming a popular social media users (like Evan is) but trying to become that overnight does not work for most internet business owners. So an easy way to use social media marketing now is to create great content and get it into the hands of social media users.

watch a video on this: Improve Search Engine Rankings - Influence Aggregators & Distributors

[WebBizIdeas.com]

Hi,

I also thought I would post a real life example to go along with this post. I am promoting a website called WholesaleKeychain.com. Obviously we need to build links for the site to rank well in the search engines, so how can you do that using social media correctly?

We decided to allow some influential sports bloggers to giveaway the keychains! Our only requirement was that the link back to the products they were giving away. How do it do?



You can view the post here to get a better idea on how to format a similar contest: http://www.boltsfromtheblue.com/2009/6/28/928738/looking-for-cool-san-diego

Instead of creating our own Twitter account and trying to create a bunch of fake followers, we just simply created a reason why influential Twitter Account owners would promote the site for us.

If you don't already have a large group of loyal followers on Twitter or any other social media site, this is an excellent way to use social media effectively today.

Jeff

[David Hurley]

Hi Jeff,

Remember, you want to influence the influencers, not they try to become the influencer overnight. Too many companies fall into the trap on trying to build 1,000's of "friends" on social media sites instead of influencing the already popular social media users.

Thank you for the great input. It offers us a whole new perspective on using Twitter and other social networking sites.

BTW, the link in your last post doesn't work. Could you re-post it please?

[PhilHogan]

I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.

I agree with Trent, un-targeted traffic is very difficult to convert.

Phil

[lisa]

What’s also interesting is that Twitter visitors view 40% more pages and spend 73% more time on my site than visitors from Google.

I was not aware of this information, which you have mentioned. I never used Twitter for business purpose, but I do have an account and I use it for fun. It is really nice to know that you are getting more and more traffic to your site through Twitter.
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Budget software

[Anelly]

I must admit i have a problem with Twitter. It's not generating traffic for my websites but I don't even like it. I know how things work there but I fail in practice.

[greatuser]

i think used Twitter is good ways to helping for getting generate traffic and increase you're PR website in search engine ..and you must do with focus and continues to really get more ..

Thanks