Twitter as a Traffic Generation Tool? You Bet!
Friday, May 2nd, 2008I (Roger) have been involved with social media for awhile now in various forms (MySpace, Facebook, blogging, LinkedIn, etc.), but I didn’t get consistently involved with Twitter until a month ago or so. Now I’d consider myself a Twitter-holic.
Rough Beginnings
At first, I just didn’t get Twitter. 140 characters to tell people “what I’m doing right now?” My first reaction was “who cares?” which gave way to “stalkers ought to love this thing!” that finally gave way to “open your mind Roger, and give it a legitimate try; there has to be a way to leverage this thing as a business tool.” So that became my self imposed initiative.
Opening My Mind
I attended my first Louisville Social Media Club event and noticed how everybody referenced their Twitter ID on the sign-in sheet. So, armed with that information I set out on my second Twitter voyage (the first one failed because I had no followers, and I wasn’t following anyone) by adding a lot of the SMC Louisville attendees to my “following.” I also added some of the people they were following to my list (the social networking aspect in play here), and a lot of those folks reciprocated which began to open my eyes on how powerful the service could be. I have since grown my list to over 100 followers and am following 175 or so on there now. Anyway, the point of this post is to show how Twitter is generating quite a bit of traffic to our blog, and that would have been impossible without sharing my “following” so the background info is relevant.
Expanding Reach
Earlier this week, I attended the Cincinnati Social Media Breakfast and met more wonderful people to add to my Twitter list. I reviewed the event and have been amazed at how much traffic that one post has generated. Other sites have referenced the review, and that was all made possible through Twitter. Nobody would have even known who I was if it weren’t for the service, and nobody would have known I wrote a review of the social media events I have attended if it weren’t for Twitter. In the “old days,” I would have had to send each attendee an e-mail with a link to the blog post then hoped they visited the site and took it upon themselves to link to it somewhere.
Traffic Results
Roughly 30% of our blog traffic has been Twitter based. In looking at the web analytics just now, the other sites that have directed traffic to our blog are a direct result of “tweets” on Twitter letting others know about the various blog posts that they now reference on their blogs. They took the “tweet” to the next level, and it’s possible to trace 75% of our existing blog traffic back to Twitter. It’s the real-time information share that makes Twitter so powerful, and it makes it so much easier for those connected to cross promote one another in multiple media. The service provides tremendous benefit if viewed from that perspective.
Bottom Line
Twitter is something to seriously consider if your business is looking for additional web traffic sources. It can provide a tremendous benefit to your business if the people you put in place to utilize Twitter handle it properly. It’s like anything else in the social media or SEO universe–time and consistency are keys to success. It’s not a light switch technology that will pay immediate dividends so keep that in mind before embarking on a Twitter journey.
Share Your Story
Got a Twitter business success story of your own? Please share it with us.
Want More Information?
Here are some interesting posts to read that touch upon the concept of Twitter as a traffic generation tool:
- Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal Blog
- Twitter’s Traffic Numbers from HitWise
- Why Twitter is Such a Useful Tool by Chris Simpson
- Twitter Guide on The Lost Art of Blogging blog
- How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger
