It has been said more than a few times that you can get blog traffic from twitter.
Whether you have tried it or are just wondering if it works you will want to read what I have found so far.
First of all, let me say that I am no expert on twitter and that I don’t use any automation or clever software to submit my tweets. I also don’t follow people and stop following them if they don’t follow me back. I think that there is a program for that too.
All I do with twitter is follow some people that I know and some that I think are worth following. Most of my followers decided to follow me first and I do follow them back sometimes but not automatically as some twitter user advisers seem to teach.
Since I follow about 600 people and have only about 600 twitter followers (to me that is more than enough to keep track of), I realize that I can’t expect to get much blog traffic from them.
To get a significant blog traffic from my own twitter followers I’d need tens of thousands of them.
But would I really get that much traffic from twitter to my blog even if that was the case?
It is my qualified opinion that I would not.
I say qualified opinion because I don’t have that many followers on twitter and therefore can’t be absolutely sure.
What I am sure of is that even with having some of my blog visitors who on occasion like what I have to say tweet or re-tweet some of my posts, the resulting blog traffic from that is more than pitiful.
Even if just 5 of those readers, who kindly want others to also read what I post about had each just 600 followers like me ( I know that some of them have thousands or even tens of thousands), tweeted my post then in theory 3,000 people would be notified and invited to my blog.
In such scenario, which is the worst case of what actually was taking place within the last 2 weeks, I should be justified in expecting at least 1% of the 3,000 twitter followers to show up on my blog and I should get blog traffic equaling 30 visitors from twitter.
According to Google Analytics, within the last month this is the blog traffic I got from twitter: full 3 visitors. (Update April 28, 2010: 4 more twitter visitors since this post was written – i.e. about one twitter visitor every 4 days).
Unless I’m doing something wrong, which anyone reading this is cordially invited to point out, (in fact I beg you to do that), the amount of blog traffic one can get from twitter is hardly worth the effort.
Anyone who blogs wants more traffic.
I have written several posts on this subject where as opposed to my twitter experience the methods I write about actually work very well.
You can read my Get Blog Traffic Increase with Comments which will give you a proven way to get traffic to your blog where previously there was none and that will also help you increase an already good existing traffic.
My blog so far has been getting most traffic this way.
There is even, arguably, a better free way to get blog traffic increase.
You can read about it in my post Earn Money Blogging, Get Traffic Without SEO?
The second best source of my blog traffic is the search engines and thus SEO.
It has brought me more than 17% of all traffic within the last 30 days according to Alexa and about 34% according to Google Analytics.
I choose to trust Google more because of the research that I’ve done on both.
But either way, SEO traffic plays a big and significant part in getting visitors to my blog. And I’m sure it will do that for your blog too.
I have heard a hugely successful blogger and online entrepreneur say “screw social media”.
I wouldn’t go that far but there is some truth in that saying for those of us that spend too much time trying to get blog traffic from twitter and other numerous social media platforms.
Again, I’m not here to knock down anything. If you get a lot of blog traffic from twitter I want to hear from you. Please voice your opinion and experience in the comments.
If, on the other hand, twitter underperforms for you as it has surely done for me then pay attention to what I wrote and for sure read my two posts mentioned here.
I want to hear from everybody.
So post your comment regarding your twitter and blog traffic experience.
Then bookmark and tweet it so others have the chance to contribute to the discussion as well.
.
Authored by Vance Sova
Subscribe to Vance Sova.com by Email
Filed under: Get Blog Traffic, Increase Blog Traffic
Hey Vance,
Ahh, Twitter…now this is a subject i haven’t read much about for a while. I really enjoyed your post and I have to agree with most of the things you say.
I have used Twitter for driving traffic to my Blog, and I agree with you, the results have been poor. I currently have just under 3600 followers and if I tweet about a new blog post I could probably count the number of people that visit my Blog from that Tweet on one hand, so from my experience (and yours too by what you wrote), Twitter is not a great tool for sending hordes of traffic to a desired web page or website.
However, when I do Tweet about a Blog post, I ALWAYS do get a few people that will click on the link in the Tweet and end up on my Blog (verified by my Google analytics), and you said yourself you got 3 visits too. Now looking at the bigger picture with this. If each time you send out a Tweet and get a few people to your Blog, they read your Blog post and like what they see. They look through some of your older posts and really enjoy the content you have on your Blog. They then bookmark your Blog, sign up to your RSS feed, and maybe opt in for the free ebook you’re giving away on your Blog so they’re now on your email list too. You can then turn these into regular readers and subscribers of yours, who really enjoy your content. The long term effect from this can be very significant.
Now i’m not saying that everyone that reaches your blog via one of your Tweets will do this, but they could. So while I would never call Twitter a primary traffic generating tool, I would certainly not dismiss it due to the low traffic it sends. It only takes a couple of minutes at the most to send out a Tweet, so it isn’t a time consuming process.
Thanks again for another quality post Vance, excellent points you make as usual 🙂
Thanks,
Paul
.-= Paul Hooper´s last blog ..Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program 3.0 + My Bonus =-.
Vance Reply:
April 12th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Hi Paul,
I’m glad you liked my post and thank you for the balanced comment.
I’m still expecting some comments that will tear me to pieces because there are some huge fans of twitter out there.
After I posted this I found one post of an A blogger who claims that he doubled his traffic with twitter within 3 months.
That I think is quite possible because he’s A blogger. People follow him in droves and re-tweet his posts perhaps trying to get his attention in addition to genuinely wanting to share them.
Your own experience is really the same as mine which is very little traffic from twitter. My aim when writing the post was not to knock twitter but to point out that often it is very overrated for whatever reason and unrealistically high expectations are created.
I’ve read a lot of posts about its virtual miraculous powers and how everybody who doesn’t use it is missing out big time.
I agree with you that even a very small contribution to traffic can and will add up. So I’m not about to discontinue using twitter altogether. But unless I find a way to make it more productive I will not hold my breath expecting the huge traffic from it that many would lead people believe is possible.
Thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving the kind of comments that I always look forward to.
Talk soon,
Vance
Hi Vance,
Just to expand on what you said in your reply. I agree with you completely about these big A list marketers. I’m sure the big guys who do use Twitter a lot have 100K in targeted followers, all of whom just jump on any of their Tweets as soon as they are sent out.
I have no doubt that they can send quite a big wave of traffic to any web based destination with one Tweet. Plus, as you mentioned, they will then re-tweet the post to maybe catch the eye of the big guy, so it goes viral and is bound to send more traffic there.
But for us little guys back down on planet earth, I don’t think we can expect those kind of results from Twitter 🙂
I certainly think Twitter has it’s place in IM and can be a very effective marketing tool, but I will never use it for a primary traffic generating strategy (not unless some super-duper software appears on the market that changes all that :-)).
I hope your post will open up a healthy debate with your other readers as I would love to hear what others views on Twitter are too.
Thanks Vance,
Paul
.-= Paul Hooper´s last blog ..Alex Jeffreys Coaching Program 3.0 + My Bonus =-.
Vance Reply:
April 12th, 2010 at 11:17 am
Hi Paul,
That’s right. You said exactly what I think about twitter working for the famous A bloggers. It works because they are followed very closely and their every move is anticipated and their fans spread their stuff virally.
The A blogger that I mentioned even said himself that his followers especially when asked will tweet about his post 3 times – when he posts it, when he tweets about how many comments he already got on it and one more time the reason for which I forget. He also says that many of his followers friends/followers re-tweet those tweets as well.
For people like us who are still closer to the earth and who don’t fly on the clouds of fame this sort of thing doesn’t happen.
I do hope for a healthy debate on this and it will happen if the twitter fans participate.
I do invite everybody to participate. Those who agree and those who disagree are more than welcome to say what they think.
As I mentioned in my post I beg those with a different experience and views to express them in their comments here.
There are people who get a lot out of twitter, I know that. I want to know how they do it and how much time they spend doing it.
Stay tuned Paul and thanks for expanding on what I said and pitch in anytime as this continues.
Vance
HI Vance and Paul…
Very nice post Vance, well written and well informed, to bring some thought to your readers.
My personal opinion about Twitter: its not worth the effort.
When it was first put up, and the rush to it started, it looked like it could be the marketers dream come true.
Software, books, courses and barrages of talk and chatter hit us all like a ton of bricks. And then everyone got on the band wagon. Including me. For a month or so, the potential was staggering. Perhaps it still is.
And then, I’ll use this expression… it got overcrowded.
Every marketer and scammer found a new venue to push their goods. My twitter page got full of everyone elses posts, and
my own posts became hard to compete with their barrages.
At that point I feel it failed to come up to the staggering potential that it had for marketers.
How is it for sending traffic to blogs? it may be wonderful for some people, but as both of you said, it’s pretty worthless as a traffic tool.
I have a very popular blog. I’m averaging about 36,000 hits a month, with over 3000 uniques. To be perfectly truthful about it, I’m not sure where it all comes from. I don’t mean it like that, I mean, most of it is coming from direct links in emails and bookmarks. But where those come from I don’t know.
I DO know that Twitter isn’t the source of any of it. You both mention relying on Google’s Analytics for stats. I have
found that to be very unreliable, and I count on my stats in my Cpanel, which is, if not far more accurate, it is more complete.
Because of the amount of traffic I generate, Google comes and visits 18 to 23 times a day, and my SEO traffic is about 50 a month! hehehe they must just bring along a friend.
Now its Facebook being the main one bringing traffic and potential customers to the marketers. Social Media will continue to jump from one form to another. Hopefully some of them will be helpful in bringing in traffic on a regular basis.
Is Twitter dead? Not hardly. As for me, I’ll stick with the old proven methods and send a tweet to some pals from time to time.
Meanwhile, you are all invited to visit my Blog, where I have nothing to sell. 🙂
Daylynne
.-= Daylynne Starr´s last blog ..Tips For Writing An Effective First Sales Page =-.
Vance Reply:
April 12th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Hi Daylynne,
Thank you for chiming in on this. Your comment is great and thanks for saying my post is well written.
I appreciate that especially from you since you are a reward winning published author.
So far everybody who commented until this point basically agrees that twitter doesn’t do for them what was expected and that it brings very little blog traffic.
I also look forward for some comments with the opposite view.
As for Google Analytics, there are different views on that. I’d say that nothing is perfect but taking everything else into consideration Google’s tools are the best in my view.
I’ve visited your blog Daylynne and you are true to your word, you don’t sell anything there.
Take care and do visit again soon.
Vance
Actually I’m trying my luck on Twitter and I can say that it works for me. Perhaps, the subject of our tweets is what catches the attention of our prospective readers. The last time I checked my Alexa ranking I saw that chucks of my traffic comes from Twitter and I’m glad about this findings. 🙂
Vance Reply:
April 12th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Hi Walter,
Thanks for visiting, haven’t seen you for a while, welcome again.
And thank you for contributing to the discussion. You could be right when you say that the subject of the tweets could make a difference.
If you are reading this perhaps you could elaborate more on how much traffic you get from twitter to your blog, like I got 3 visits this month, Paul gets on average 6 visits when he tweets.
As for the subject of the tweets, I know that you subject appeals to a much wider audience.
But generally our followers are interested in our subjects otherwise they wouldn’t be following, I think.
Take care,
Talk soon,
Vance
Walter Reply:
April 21st, 2010 at 4:51 pm
I regularly tweet some of my post using Hootsuite. The way I know it works is that I can track the view from my WordPress using the popular post plugin. I get at least 5 visits per day on the posts I have tweeted, and some leave even leave comments about the subject. That’s how I know it works. 🙂
.-= Walter´s last blog ..Forgotten essence =-.
Vance Reply:
April 21st, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Hi Walter,
Thanks for the visit and comment. I have noticed that you tweet quite often and regularly. I have only recently found out about Hootsuite and will have to learn how to use it.
I’ll post about any significant progress in getting blog traffic from twitter. Comments about success with twitter like yours are a great help to me in not abandoning twitter altogether.
I appreciate every one of them.
Vance
You know Vance, while Twitter does not bring me all that much traffic it has the potential to bring much more than those who are following you. If one of your followers liked your post and they retweet it and one of theirs likes it and does the same and it goes on and on, there is the potential for a post to go viral.
The above example is especially true if one of the above followers’ tweet got the attention of an A Lister who then tweeted to his/her followers. Unfortunately a lot of it has to do with timing. Are they online when you send the tweet, because if their not it’s lost in plethora of other tweets that’s gone on after you.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..Reality TV And How It Is Corrupting Society =-.
Vance Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 2:36 am
Hi Sire,
That is an interesting way to look at it.
The right timing may be like a lottery though. I wonder what the right time would be. To find that out would require a lot of testing and confirmations of the time when things work the best.
Do you have any idea what the best time could be? Have you done any testing?
I can see the potential if and when a tweet goes viral. I’d like to see it happen and then I’d be more inclined to join the chorus of praises for twitter.
If you haven’t re-tweeted my post I’d be grateful if you could do it. Just for the odd chance that it goes viral.
I do realize the irony in my saying that twitter doesn’t do much for me and then asking you to tweet.
But could there be a better way to prove me wrong than creating tons of traffic through twitter?
Thanks for the comment and for your good point.
Vance
Sire Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 5:21 am
I actually meant to tweet it when I left my last comment Vance and then I got sidetracked and forgot. I’ll tweet it this time though. It’s now 10.54 pm in Australia, just so you can start the testing. 😉
.-= Sire´s last blog ..Win A Trip For Two To Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion =-.
Vance Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Thanks Sire, I will take note of the time and hopefully the impact will be noticeable. I will definitely let you know if I find out what the best timing is. It would be great if one could figure out the busy times when most twitter users check their tweets and are inclined to RT.
That kind of information could be a gold mine. Perhaps it is already available somewhere, I’m sure twitter knows but would they share that?
The testing is on.
Vance
I am using Twitter to auto-post my new blog posts via Twitterfeed, but I also make a point in checking in at least every two days for a bit of personal interaction. So far I haven’t seen a big percentage of “Twitter Readers” to my blog. For me it is just an additional tool in the box 😉 Most of my new visitors come nowadays via search engines. I still think Twitter is useful to get the Google bot to your site, i.e. new blog posts indexed quicker. I know that twitter links are nofollow, but still I have the gut feeling that bots / spiders still follow (but not value / count) them. Just my 2 cents, SY
.-= hospitalera@Adsense Geld´s last blog ..Brauche Geld =-.
Vance Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Hi SY,
Your comment is much appreciated and certainly your opinion is valued in $$$ and not cents.
I’m not sure if the bots come over quicker because of twitter but your personal interaction every 2 days is something I should try to match. The twitter links could have some value I suppose but what that is is a guessing game. It seems that nofollow links are valued to a degree and the debate on how much and by which search engines will likely go on forever. Google is the one that matters most these days.
Having most of your visitors come through search engines is great. Having twitter as an additional tool in the box is a good way to put it. It sounds more real to me than the “you are missing big if you don’t use twitter” kind of talk.
Vance
hospitalera@Irish Home and Garden Reply:
April 24th, 2010 at 5:52 am
I must admit that my personal interaction on Twitter is nowadays mostly by @ and DM 😉 I can see the point of spending more time on Twitter when you want to brand yourself and your (online) business. Many years that was called creating a “corporated identity”, not sure if the term is still used. So, if I wanted to brand myself as the online authority in “betta fish breeding” or similar, then I would spend more time on Twitter, but as I have many niches, I don’t see the need for that so much, sorry, just rambling on … SY
PS I am hospitalera on Twitter if somebody looks for me 😉
.-= hospitalera@Irish Home and Garden´s last blog ..Improvements on Ceramic Sinks =-.
Vance Reply:
April 24th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Hi SY,
I’m not sure about the time that would be reasonably worth it to spend on twitter. But communicating by @ and DM is good with those who interact with you I suppose. Do you use anything like HootSuite or TweetDack?
I saw a video about iPad recently and they have an app for twitter too. Joel Comm is using it now.
As for branding yourself with twitter I don’t really know how that would work. It would require a lot of time I suppose which most people including me don’t have. I read a blog post recently where a poll or survey was conducted of small business owners and big too I guess and I think about 20% of them outsource this sort of thing.
Vance
I’ve not verified this by GA but whenever I notice a RT for my post there is usually a surge in blog traffic too, although its not too much.
Vance Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Hi Selurus,
Welcome to my blog and thank you for joining the discussion.
It’s good to know that you get a surge in traffic when somebody RT’s your post. Can you find out how big the surge is? Not too much is an indication but I wonder if it’s single digit, double digit or even triple digit number of visits.
For me it’s not even 1 visit per RT, so far at least. I’ve had one twitter visitor to this post by the end of the day yesterday resulting from 1 tweet and 1 RT.
Vance
Hi Vance,
I think you’re spot on in your assessment.
I have two larger Twitter accounts and a couple of smaller ones. One has 7,000 followers and the other 3,000. My Tweets from my blogs, which I have several of, go through Hootsuite via RSS feeds. The clicks that the Tweets get are tracked and the results are pretty dismal with the largest seen to date being 35 clicks this year for one post.
A couple of my blogs, on average, get several guest posts per day yet most days see zero clicks. The highest day this year for the account with 7K users saw twenty-two clicks with ten and nine being the next highest.
It all makes sense, to me anyways, if you stop and look at your own Twitter habits. How many people actually read any of the Tweets in their timeline? How often do they? I think you’d find the numbers are pretty low.
As for the talk of potential, while I won’t say it’s non-existent it still falls into what I said above. Tweets are just a number and are they not totally meaningless if nobody is reading them. Potential is like theory and, like theory, oft times does not translate well in actual practice.
Irregardless, Twitter and other social marketing venues is at the bottom of the list for me in traffic generation. Do I use them? Sure, they’re free and I have it set-up so it’s all automated. So why not. However, I don’t expect much in results nor do I get much.
On another note, you asked me on my personal blog in one comment why my comments are no longer “do-follow”. I transferred my blog to another host and never reinstalled the plug-in. I don’t spend much time on it anymore and, as a result, it’s been left that way and will continue as is.
.-= Rod Macbeth´s last blog ..A Little Inspiration =-.
Vance Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Hi Rod,
Wow, what an outstanding and information packed comment.
You always give very substantial and pointed comments but I think this is probably the first time that you actually agree with me.
Am I dreaming?
Nice to have you visit after a long pause Rod.
I’m glad that you have many blogs and I hope they are profitable.
What you said in your comment is so valuable because you have more twitter accounts and by far more followers than I do.
I appreciate your comment so much not because it confirms my observation but because it is so detailed and substantive.
I was, believe it or not, kind of wanting to be proven wrong when writing the post because that way I could find out how to generate more blog traffic from twitter.
But of course being kind of right feels good too.
So far from the comments here it would seem that most people use twitter mainly because it is free and because they have it set up. And because there is a chance, however small, that at some point a tweet could go viral.
Thanks for the explanation of your blog now being nofollow-the change being unintentional and you don’t feel strongly enough to change it back where it was.
That’s cool.
Talk soon,
Vance
Hey Vance,
I got involved on Twitter towards the end of last year and really enjoyed it!
I’ve not been on there for a while but simply because I’ve been really busy and tweeting wasn’t an “A” priority. I’ll be tweeting more again soon when I’m through this busy phase as I’ve made some good friends on there and had some laughs but back to your question – can you drive traffic?
Well I’ve been tracking list sign ups and I can see that some have come directly from tweets and re-tweets! Not LOADS but a decent number and considering it’s all free traffic it’s not bad.
Sire raises and interesting point about timing. To add to that I think people using tweet deck and hootsuite (what I use) to segregate their followers will be able to back track far enough (on most occasions) to see your last tweet – the key is being interesting enough to get added to one of their lists of people they check regulalry rather that solely relying on the luck of tweeting in the right place at the right time!
My view is, enjoy twitter for the social aspect, the networking and for fun – tweet about what you do occasionally (like a new blog post or report) and if you get traffic and sign ups then that’s a free bonus.
Rob
.-= Rob Bradley´s last blog ..Traffic Myth Unmasked (LIVE PROOF) 😉 =-.
Vance Reply:
April 13th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Hi Rob,
Nice to have you visit again and comment.
I’d like to know who is not busy these days, so I doubly appreciate you took the time for this.
What you say is very interesting I remember hearing or reading about tweet deck and other tools like hootsuite but never took the time to really look at them.
It sounds like they would be of great help in tracking things. Being on a list that people check regularly would be great. Are my tweets interesting enough? I can probably improve there.
You are obviously doing more things right with twitter than I do. Getting decent traffic, not loads sounds pretty good to me.
Thanks for your contribution Rob.
Keep in touch,
Vance
Hi Vance,
I didn’t have a chance to read the above comments completely, so I hope that what I say isn’t the same as everyone else.
Analytics are not always accurate in terms of how much traffic is coming from Twitter. I believe that it depends on the URL shorteners people are using when they share your post, or the platform they are tweeting from. My GA shows referrals from Twitter, Ow.ly, HootSuite, TwitterFeed and other various URL shortening services that can be used via Twitter.
Also, even if you don’t get a lot of clicks to your site from a post going viral, you are getting the attention which may turn into followers which may lead to traffic to your website in the future simply from one person seeing that one of the people they are following is always sharing links from you, so they start following you, then see something interesting, etc.
This is also why I suggest alternative uses for Twitter. People who just look towards it for traffic may not see the full value of listening to their audience, getting ideas from what people are talking about, and so on. Being in tune with what is going on will help you write more posts that will be well received on the Twitter community. Then you will end up with that traffic. But a lot of people just expect they will build followers, tweet their links and get traffic. It’s a bit more complicated than that. 🙂
.-= Kristi@Blogging Tips´s last blog ..HootSuite for Blogging – Twitter Management for Bloggers =-.
Vance Reply:
April 14th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Hi Kristi,
Welcome to my blog. I really feel fortunate to have you visit and post your comment.
What you say is well taken and unique. I’m glad that you point out things that I haven’t considered before.
Like the future potential of the attention I may be getting even if it has not yet resulted in much traffic.
And you are right that I have not taken into consideration alternative uses of twitter. My observation of what twitter seems to be used for by most people was just what you say in your last sentence “But a lot of people just expect they will build followers, tweet their links and get traffic. It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
It’s now becoming clear to me that there are also different users who actually do use twitter for what you suggest, alternative uses like communication – listening to ones audience and getting ideas from it.
Reading your post about HootSuite for blogging was very revealing and helpful.
It is something that will help me with the alternative twitter use.
HootSuite is something that I can appreciate as opposed to the automated submitters and other gimmicks.
Thank you very much for your visit and comment and I hope to see you here soon.
Vance
hospitalera@Irish Home and Garden Reply:
April 24th, 2010 at 5:56 am
Me again, sorry, can’t resist. I think it depends also on what your blog is all about, who your audience is. Depending on the niche you are in your readers will be more or less Twitter savvy and more or less inclined to use it. SY
.-= hospitalera@Irish Home and Garden´s last blog ..Improvements on Ceramic Sinks =-.
Vance Reply:
April 24th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Yes, it is likely the case but how would you know in which niche it works well and in which it doesn’t?
There seems to be very little interaction among twitter users from what I’ve seen no matter which niche. Kind of like almost everybody promoting themselves and doing very little else.
Today I noticed one person promoting their different videos every few minutes with very little or no response.
Then you have the automated tweets like quoting what other people have said. Does anybody seriously read that anymore since so many people are doing it?
Anyway I’m still exploring this twitter thing and with mixed feelings to be sure. There is definitely some good and a lot of chaff.
Kristi has explained it well and I agree with her in terms of GA results about Twitter. In order to find out how effective it is in accordance to your traffic goals, a few strategies with trials/error needed. I started my blogging journey resisting twitter, and now it is one of my main traffic contributor besides Facebook. I agree with you, search engine and blog visits can be great for our traffic, but if we manage to somehow combining the two, utilize the existing connections and draw in potential readers (friends of your blog readers) can be easier at times. 🙂
Social media takes time, but worth a shot. I just wish to encourage you with this comment as I see you are planning to continue and probably try your hands on Hootsuite – smart choice. Would love to see your progress after this. One step at a time, find out your own momentum and build up the quality network gradually. All the best!
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
.-= Ching Ya´s last blog ..How to Improve Facebook Engagement by Decluttering News Feed =-.
Vance Reply:
April 15th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Hi Ching Ya,
I really appreciate your encouragement and welcome to my blog.
Your comment is very helpful and now I practically cannot do anything but try to improve the way I use twitter.
If you can use it in a way that has a major effect on your blog traffic then it’s obvious that it can be done. I had some doubts about the potential of twitter as a good blog traffic booster for some time.
I’m glad that I wrote the post about my experience with twitter so far because for me it was a frustrating one and I was looking to find what the experience of others really was like.
I’m glad also that you acknowledge the importance of search engine (SEO) traffic and that from blog comments.
Thank you for commenting and for being interested in my progress after this.
I hope it means that you’ll come for a visit and comment again.
I really look forward to that.
Vance
I guess to me it’s more about hitting critical mass. I feel like Twitter, Google Buzz etc. are all a bit of distraction at first. It’s more important to be able to drive traffic via traditional methods first and once you have enough people coming that way then the other social strategies are just gravy.
My 2 cents
.-= Chris@Money Making Ideas´s last blog ..Cash Crate Review =-.
Vance Reply:
April 15th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Hi Chris,
Interesting comment but you seem to have avoided completely relating your experience with twitter.
There are people who say what you just wrote who are doing just fine without using twitter. One of them is the very successful person that I mentioned in my post.
I’d like you to share your personal experience with twitter if you have one.
Twitter traffic may indeed be just gravy for some but it is less than that for many like me so far and it is close to meat and potatoes for others.
Vance
Hey Vance,
You can get traffic from Twitter but like every method you do need to work at it.
When I was using Twitter every day the results were not great but not too bad either, I found that using it to reply to people and start chats is what got people coming to my blog not just posting “New Blog Post About…”
It was from the follower of the people that I was chatting with that visited I guess as when I had Harris Fellman, for one example reply to something I said to him, my views shot up.
I would certainly not use it as one of my main sources of traffic as it can take a lot of time (and gets a bit addictive)
Great post as always,
James
.-= James Howard´s last blog ..Viral Marketing 101 Not Using It Could Kill Your Business! =-.
Vance Reply:
April 16th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Hey James,
Your comment is very to the point as it answers the post headline in the first sentence.
Thank you for that assurance. I admit not working twitter the way you suggest and I think that is one of the causes of the dismal results I’ve been getting.
I’ll start chatting a bit more and see if people will be more inclined to want to find out what I write about on my blog.
The time issue will always be a big factor. I will have to limit the time devoted to twitter and thus avoid the danger of getting addicted to it.
I’m very much encouraged to experiment with twitter and will perhaps post about the results in a few months when they become clear.
What I’m looking for is a worthwhile contribution of traffic to my blog from twitter in addition to using it to keep in touch.
I wouldn’t expect it to be a major contributor to my blog traffic unless I devote a major portion of my time to it, which is very unlikely to ever happen.
I really appreciate your visit and thank you for your comment.
Vance
Hey Vance,
Wow, this is quite a hot bed of comments you have here and one subject that is quite amazing, when you think back to 6 months ago, I was addicted to twitter, but until recently I have only just picked back up with it.
So in the last 3 months where I haven’t even touched Twitter, what has happened to my followers and of course visitors to my Blog from twitter?
Well on April 15th I tweeted my own Blog Post, the first time in about 3 months and received 3 hits from that, so a small amount of traffic, but traffic all the same. So if I auto tweeted that post 4 times a day, amongst other tweets, I should get 12 hits a day, or there abouts, so that is what I am about to do now I have read this post.
In addition, I have not added any new followers or lost any in the 3 months I have not tweeted or indeed been near it!
So, I will report on this Vance for sure, it is a very Interesting project, but I am also embarking on other traffic avenues too with Social Media to see if there is any mileage in what we read and of course what we are taught.
I like Blog commenting, it keeps it real and upfront, the interaction is the main one for me, as is google buzz.
Some say google buzz is another distraction, but I see it as another source, provided you don’t spend too much time in there!
I managed to produce a report from an interaction I had a month ago, so another avenue worth promoting.
Vance, I love your detailed posts, worth reading and taking the time to comment on.
Take care
Sure we will talk soon 🙂
Sean
.-= Sean Beardmore´s last blog ..Making Money Online Full Time =-.
Vance Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Hi Sean,
I love your comment because it’s very concrete, exactly what I asked for, your experience with twitter and the traffic it gets to your blog.
I’m glad you like my posts and thank you for saying that. It helps a lot to know that what I’m doing is appreciated.
It’s interesting that you went from being addicted to twitter to not using it at all for 3 months. I think that was a wise thing to do.
It’s good that you haven’t lost that many followers and your tweets can still generate some response.
I guess it depends who follows you and why. A lot of my followers just seem to follow for a few days and if I don’t follow them back they quickly stop following me. This is one aspect of twitter that I don’t like – the who can get the most followers race. To me that is silly and pointless.
Trying different sources of traffic is always good and you are right in doing that. Social media takes up a lot of time and one needs to evaluate very carefully how much the time spent there is worth.
Blog commenting is never a waste of time and it is a real communication on subject of mutual interest. If done properly of course. Spam comments are a big nuisance but spammers are short lived and easily eliminated on your own blog.
Thanks for your comment and I look forward to your next one. If you can report on your project that will be great.
Take care and all the best with your full time online efforts.
Vance
I stopped using Twitter when I tested and saw how poor the traffic was. Most of the good quality traffic that followed me on Twitter was the people who were already on my mailing list. Most of the others were just spammers expecting me to follow them back (yeah right!) or people who were never going to buy from me.
Last time I looked a few months ago I was following 8 and had about 250 following me. I just checked again and I now have about 85 following, which proves to me two things.
#1 – More than half the people who were following me were hoping I’d follow them back. I ONLY follow my interests, so that silly tactic doesn’t work on me.
#2 – Only a small percentage of my target market use Twitter. My mailing lists bubble around the 12,000 mark. I get far more traffic from my product sites via affiliates and my blog.
My gut feel is social networking in general is not going to work with my target market of small businesses who need software tools. It’s a lot of effort for very poor results. If my market were one of the more popular desires of the general public, then it may work a little better, but I doubt it.
To prove this, many casual acquaintances who don’t really know me or what I do, and are what I’d call non-techy, non-webmaster types (who still use either Yahoo or their ISP for email), often ask me if I have a Facebook account. I reply “No, it looks rubbish.” Then when they drift into how brilliant it is, I just reply something along the lines of “To do so would be a complete waste of my time on this planet – and yours. You need to get out and meet more real people. People who you ‘meet’ on social networking sites are NOT really your friends.” And then I smile. 😉
Those people aren’t my target market and likely never will be as long as they think MySpace and FaceBook are great, and worth wasting huge chunks of their lives on.
I blame boredom and 9-5 jobs for the success of “social networking”.
::roll
If you really want traffic, you can’t beat *sensible* worthwhile blog comments to really get to your target market. Whether the readers like what you say or not, they’ll certainly get to know who you are, and click through out of curiosity.
In fact I’d say that in my experience, blog commenting and affiliates are the two best forms of free / low cost traffic there are. (Never waste that traffic by not trying to get a name and email address – popovers are good.)
As an aside, my wife and I went to see an Australian comedian a few weeks ago (Adam Hills).
While he was doing his act, he pulled a 12-year old out of the audience and asked him his name. The boy didn’t want to tell him because he hated the name his parents had given him.
So Adam Hills sent a tweet in the break to ask his followers what new cool name they could come up with for this kid to use.
Twitter is absolute GOLD in those circumstances. His followers already know very well who he is and have probably met him at gigs, so they’re very interested in what he has to say as it’s usually amusing. Of course he got a huge response to his request.
If you’re a celebrity (TV or otherwise), then social networking really works in your favour. If you’re a relative unknown, then it probably isn’t going to work for you.
And of course, the downside to social networking can be seen in the recent Nestle debacle.
Ouch!
In all, because of my main niche, social networking traffic isn’t worth diddly to me, but I can see how it would be useful to others.
About Traffic Stats…
cPanel isn’t good enough to show you your real stats. Your cPanel stats that says hits really refers to each individual element that makes up a page. So if you have 10 images on a page, a single person viewing that page would register as 11 hits. So a given number of uniques may actually be less than a tenth of that depending on whether they viewed other pages on your site and registered more hits.
Google Analytics (which is what most people rely on because it’s free) is pretty much useless, and also gives away the locations of all your other sites in your network as it uses the same ID on every site. Not good unless you want to make it easy for a competitor to steal your niches.
People that say GA is good really don’t know what they’re talking about and it becomes a case of “GA is great for stats” being repeated over and over. You then get social proof kick in and it gets repeated even more. It’s very much like the blind leading the blind rather than actual tested fact.
Having an opinion is fine, but you can’t beat actual tested comparisons between systems – most people just repeat what they’ve read whether it’s accurate or not. This is why Vance’s post is so good. He’s actually tested and seen the poor amount of traffic he gets from Twitter, which flies in the face of what many marketers would have you believe when they want you to buy their Twitter tool or course.
GA shows you the big picture, but you can’t see the detail of a single person, where they came from, what phrase they used to find your site, if they’ve made several visits etc.
You need a paid service like StatCounter to really get the correct perspective on your visitors – you can see if people come back to your blog and a good idea if they’ve bookmarked you as you get a “no referring link” show up against their IP address for repeat visits. Unless you’ve just sent an email out for a new post, then there’s a good chance they’ve used a browser bookmark.
You can also get a good idea using a plugin called ShortStat which is free. While not as good as StatCounter (I use both on my blogs) this will show you resources accessed and when so you can see which posts are being found and for what keywords.
(For instance my main business blog gets at least 2 visits a week from people who have typed in “jobs are for losers” into Google, which I personally find amazing.)
-Frank Haywood
.-= Frank Haywood´s last blog ..Fame And Traffic =-.
Vance Reply:
April 17th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Hi Frank,
Welcome to my blog, I think this is your first comment here and what a treasure of a comment it is. Wow, one of the longest comments I’ve ever received.
Your experience with twitter seems to be very similar with mine so far. The people who follow only to get you to follow them back that disappear when you don’t is exactly what I get more than enough of.
This aspect of twitter is what turns me off the most. But I must say that there are people who are genuinely interested to be found as well which is what keeps me from abandoning twitter altogether.
II will give it another try thanks to a few people that have commented here and who no doubt have done much more to make twitter useful to them than I have.
I will check out StatsCounter and ShortStat, thank you for mentioning them and how you view GA.
Thank you for saying that my post is good. I wrote what was on my mind and I wanted to know what other bloggers twitter experience really was like.
Your story about the entertainer tweeting and getting a huge response back right away illustrates how twitter works for famous or well known people.
That kind of experience is what is often emphasized. I wanted to find out what is the reality for ordinary people with no claim to fame.
Frank it really is amazing that people would type “jobs are for losers” in the search box.
Thank you so much for your comprehensive comment.
I really appreciate it.
I look forward to your next one.
Vance
Hi Vance
So glad I read this post.
I was beginning to panic, thinking that I was the only blogger in the world who didn’t twitter and was missing out on tens even hundreds of comments, then I read your words…
“According to Google Analytics, within the last month this is the blog traffic I got from twitter: full 3 visitors.”
Having read that, it seems that “starting to twitter” can go a little further down by list of things to do.
I also note what Sire says “…there is the potential for a post to go viral.” so I’m not ruling it out but I have stopped panicking.
.-= Keith Davis@public speaking´s last blog ..Flying in formation =-.
Vance Reply:
April 18th, 2010 at 10:18 am
Hi Keith,
I’m glad that reading my post helped you to calm down.
There’s definitely no reason to panic if you are not using twitter yet. Continue commenting and when you have some time perhaps get a twitter account and see what twitter can do for you without holding your breath and stressing about it.
As you can see from the other comments here getting loads of traffic from twitter doesn’t happen for everybody. If you are famous or if you work very hard at it it may happen.
Vance
In my very brief experience with Twitter I failed to find a decent reason for marketing anything on there but I suspect there are niches out there that would work well with it. I also suspect the level of trust your followers have in you plays a huge role in how successful your tweets are.
Vance Reply:
April 19th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Hi Steve,
I don’t think that the niche you’re in has anything to do with whether twitter works for you or not. Also what is your brief experience with it? A week a month, 6 months?
Vance
Hey man! Know what? I come to your blog via twitter. See twitter can really drive traffic. Although few people click it doesn’t matter as long we can drive the traffic. From my experience, my followers tend to retweet so my link will go viral among tweeples. Hence, they may end up being my loyal blog readers, my subscriber or follow me on twitter.
I’m so into Twitter. That’s why every headline that has Twitter word will catch my eye. I agree with all your points.
Vance Reply:
April 19th, 2010 at 11:54 pm
Hey Fazreen,
You are the first confirmed person that has come to my blog through twitter and has left a comment. Wow, I’m impressed.
You seem to have good and loyal followers if they tend to retweet your stuff. If you are so into twitter perhaps you can teach me a thing or two.
If I get a lots of people like you from twitter I will write another post reflecting on that.
Are you sure you agree with all my points?
It’s fine to disagree if your experience or opinion is different.
Thank you for your comment and welcome to my blog.
I’ll look forward to your next visit and comment.
Vance
Vance,
Social media has worked for me in the past. Before the age of Twitter, an article I posted on another of my sites was stumbled by several people via StumbleUpon. It happened to get randomly chosen as a feature for a hour or so on the home page of SU and ever since that incident it has been coming up on page 1 of Google for the chosen keyword and usually at position #2, occasionally #1.
When Twitter arose I played with it a bit (yeah, no real statistics sorry) and will say that I am not impressed. A few of the comments above mention the subject line and the niche/topic being blogged about need to fit with the Twitter crowd (not in those words, but close enough).
That is what I found. Many of the likely readers of blogs like ours are online reading longer articles and searching for more “stable” content, than they will find in Tweets. Sure, some tweets may lead the occasional visitor here, such as Fazreen, but from a return on investment angle, the hours invested in following, tweeting, re-tweeting, un-following, and so on, have to equate to $$ in the bank back here on the blog or it’s just not worth it.
With anything in my business I apply the 80/20 rule. If 20% of the work gets 80% of the results that is where I spend my time. Tweeting, in my opinion, sits among the 80%, meaning it takes 4 times as long to get 1/4 of the benefit – a 1/16 ratio. Not a good return ratio.
That’s my 2c worth – Michael
.-= Michael Pedzotti@Plan your internet business´s last blog ..10 Steps to Internet Business Success =-.
Vance Reply:
May 6th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your comprehensive comment and welcome to my blog.
You have taken the time to read the other comments which is good. I really do not want to write off twitter completely but what you say kind of confirms my own perception of it’s true ROI.
I see some people tweeting almost every hour, most likely through some automation device or else they’d be spending most of their time on twitter.
The other problem is that most people on twitter aren’t paying much attention to the tweets of other people. I certainly don’t read every tweet. Maybe one out of a hundred. I simply can’t believe that people with tens of thousands of followers who follow a similar number of people read even 1% of the tweets they pretend they follow.
A few people that commented on this post seem to have good results with twitter and they most certainly spend more time on it than me. But it goes all back to evaluating how much time you need to spend on twitter to get good results and whether those results are worth the time spent.
Vance
I was used to using Twitter in the last two months, but I quitted it several weeks ago, since I wasn’t getting the results I was hopping for. I was adding links to my site several times a day, but my tweets were definitely not spam, as I was posting a lot of side articles and news. Maybe Twitter has some potential, but I believe that taking advantage of it is not as easy as it sounds.
.-= Daniel Sharkov@Marketing product reviews´s last blog ..Artisteer – Create Blog and Website Templates Easy =-.
Vance Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Yes Daniel,
Twitter does have a potential but one has to work at it much harder than it is made out to be. Then it is a question of whether you really want to put all that time and energy into it.
I have decided not to give up so easily but I have also lowered my expectations. After some time I’ll revisit the subject in another post to give it a second and more qualified look.
Vance
I do believe that we can get traffic from twitter if you got targeted follower
Thank you for sharing superb informations. Your website is so cool. I am impressed by the details that youˇ¦ve on this blog. It reveals how nicely you understand this subject. Bookmarked this web page, will come back for more articles. You, my friend, ROCK! I found simply the information I already searched everywhere and simply could not come across. What a perfect site.
Vance Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Hi Toni,
That’s simply too flattering. But if you really mean it, please do keep on reading. In future comments it would be great if you commented more on the subject of the articles or posts and limit any praise to just one or two words. The reason for that is that other readers are interested in the discussed subject more than anything else.
Thank you for taking the time to comment.
Cheers,
Vance