Comments on: What is the Real Value of a Social Media Visitor?

By: mysapce

mysapce — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:48:39 +0000

I like digg. The whole concept of that social media is really cool.

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Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:13:52 +0000

[...] What is the Real Value of a Social Media Visitor? [...]

By: francis

francis — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:04:44 +0000

One potential pitfall to be wary of is that, though advertisers are probably only looking at number of page views and not the source, some will want to know where it all came from. In my experience, though, most advertisers don’t ask this question. If they end up buying an ad spot on the blog they might find the click-throughs to be disproportionate to the amount of impressions they’ve paid for. This is mainly an issue when the blog has a very high proportion of social media traffic compared to other sources. Advertisers who find click-throughs are low will be unlikely to renew with one. If this turns out to be a problem for the blog, try weighting social media traffic differently when calculating the rates.
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francis
Link Building

By: javed Khalil

javed Khalil — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:44:39 +0000

Wow. I am impressed and I agree. Very useful post for those who give less attention towards social media, like myself…

By: Daniel, The Hosting Blog

Daniel, The Hosting Blog — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:40:51 +0000

I have heard the same complaints on my fav forums like DP and SitePoint. They all say that the only thing digg and SU users can do is eat up your bandwidth. Then they say they never click on any of their ads, QQ,QQ,QQ. and how they only cost them money.

I think that these guys aren’t looking at the big picture. These users are still readers and you could score some good subscribers / people referring your site to friends. I think its a good way to spark your blog

By: Andre

Andre — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:27:20 +0000

I currently have Share This buttons available on both of my sites, though it's not the main focus. Social media traffic is a helpful but it's more of an ego boost for me and the folks that contribute to my other site, The Terminal than anything else. It lets us know that we're doing something right. But I would also consider Twitter and Plurk as good sources of social media traffic and they help build those relationships that we so desperately got into for, at least I like the idea of "meeting" people and encouraging more of those types of conversation both on the web and in person.

By: Chris McElroy aka NameCritic

Chris McElroy aka NameCritic — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:55:12 +0000

Thank you skellie. I’ve seen great results from social media for most of the blogs I own or manage, but there are always some that don’t do as well just as you suggested.

By: moneymanager

moneymanager — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:56:11 +0000

just an after thought skellie,
the latest buzz is that stumbleupon been put on block,
up for grabs!!!!!!!
guess things are not going that great, is it?

By: SEO Genius

SEO Genius — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:02:07 +0000

Another excellent post, very well written and rather interesting. Excellent, seems like your taking over ProBlogger :D

By: Sara

Sara — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:51:31 +0000

Wow, great post, Skellie. You really looked at this in a comprehensive way. On my blog I’ve noticed that visitors from SU tend to look at more pages, while Digg users don’t – I think SU users are perhaps interested in the topics while with Digg it’s more about instant gratification of a particular post. But you are right, the standard assumptions about social media visitors just aren’t always true. Also, rjani, I totally agree with you – use social media because you love it and enjoy being social and learning, not to self-promote. :)

By: The Collegiate Gourmet

The Collegiate Gourmet — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:58:12 +0000

Twitter and StumbleUpon have given me my highest amount of traffic, but the bounce rates are high. I’m still waiting for the search engines to kick in as my blog is fairly new.

By: CoolProducts

CoolProducts — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:17:07 +0000

Thanks for the insight on this! Looking forward to seeing more of your articles on ProBlogger Skellie!

By: Haroun Kola

Haroun Kola — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:50:35 +0000

Thanks for this post. I’ve never written article for social media before, though I have shared on facebook and twitter, which is more “friendly”
Maybe I’ll try out some of these sites :)

By: rjani

rjani — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:28:36 +0000

Great post Skellie. I think participating in social media sites is not much of a burden if you use it for your own purposes, I mean surf pages you like and have a great time instead of thinking about promoting your blog there.

By: Sarah Watts

Sarah Watts — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:23:20 +0000

Audience is audience no matter where it comes from; it all depends on targeting. Some bloggers like to target social bookmarking websites and some bloggers target direct traffic from other blogs and websites and search engines. This is why crafting a detailed strategy for your blog is so crucial; once you have a strategy you know for sure what sort of traffic you want to attract your blog.

I personally think traffic from Digg and other such websites is much overhyped. Rather one should focus on intentional traffic — traffic from search engines where people are looking for a specific search term and from other blogs and websites where they can clearly see what you are publishing on your blog or website. It is less confusing and hence less frustrating for them.

By: JB

JB — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:07:00 +0000

awesome post! best I have read here in a while.

By: J.D. Meier

J.D. Meier — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:09:37 +0000

You never cease to amaze me.

You ask the tough questions. You organize a frame for analyzing it. You provide insight and experience that trumps the stuff you find in books … and you always close with a bang.

By: moneymanager

moneymanager — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:26:55 +0000

hi skellie,
firstly welcome to darrens den.
great seeing you here.
a long time fan of yours,
i have read your earlier articles on the same topic in skelliewag, and this a step further on them.
while the traffic from social media sites is great(which blogger doesent like the site counter ticking?), but the point in hindsight is one need not be a slave to the practice of pushing blog up at any cost, there is fear of you loosing your focus on your topic of the blogs,
nice article,best wishes

By: Infonote

Infonote — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:03:21 +0000

The feed for popular Stumbleupon stories is the following.

http://rss.stumbleupon.com/buzz/

The actual site is http://buzz.stumbleupon.com/

You have made an honest analysis of social sites and it’s ROI.

By: goodfather

goodfather — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:50:04 +0000

Great post. I didn’t understand the ‘clicking patterns’ of tracking coming from Digg or other bookmarking sites. I also really liked your explanation of CPC vs. CPM.

Thanks!