idealmike
Level X3
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We all know how effective social media sites can be for getting the word "out there" about your new product, service or website. For drumming up visitors, clients and sales. For building brand awareness and building up your clientele and making sales. But which social media site is the best for generating the most amount of traffic in the quickest way? Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? LinkedIn? Google+?
To me, they can all be effective for driving traffic to your site/product, service etc (including your SEOClerks services that you have for sale here). But they do require some work to go about making that happen. But some require "more work" than others. And some have their own unique ways of doing it. For example; with Twitter, you have to follow other people, get them to follow you, engage with others, retweet their tweets etc etc and it can take quite a long time before you actually start getting any significant traffic from it. Where as with other social sites like Facebook, you can start a Page or a Group and that can end up getting shared quicker and going viral and can send you more traffic, more quickly. Basically, each site has its own way you can use it to drive traffic to your site and each site can send traffic but each site requires different work, input and time before you can start seeing any of that traffic. Or good amounts anyway!
Here's what I think of the top 5 Social Media sites for generating traffic to your site. A little about how you would go doing that on each site, and which one works best for it (IMO).
Facebook
With Facebook, there are many ways you can drive traffic to your site. The first and most obvious way is with a Facebook Page. An official Page for your website or business. But that Page will only be as good as the amount of likes (fans) it has. IF you don't have many fans, your posts wont get much response at all. And of course, Facebook limits how many people your Page posts reach as well. If you want more response you can pay for boosts of course or pay for likes with a Facebook ad but that's paid advertising and not what this is about. The other option is with a Facebook Group. Unlike Pages, your post reach isn't limited with a group. You can have a lot more members in a group and everyone sees your posts in their timeline and gets an email notification about it as well (for those that haven't disabled email notifications). The only thing with a group is, everyone will be posting all their links and stuff as well and visiting them and not just your stuff that you post. But regardless, all this takes time to make happen anyway, you need to promote your Page or Group to get fans/members for it and constantly engage with people everyday on them and grow them up overtime. As such, you can't really expect to get a lot of traffic from Facebook Pages/Groups unless they have many many users and have spent a lot of time working on them.
Twitter
With Twitter you get your Twitter profile page and that's it. When you post something on twitter, you can use #hashtags and when people search for something on it using those #hashtags, your tweets have a good chance of being seen. However, in order to get insane amounts of traffic from twitter, you either need to have kazillions of followers that are not only active, but actually interested in your product/services etc. Sometimes your tweets can get retweeted by big accounts and go on to send you traffic, but that only happens more if you are retweeting their tweets and they see and know you're doing it and then feel like giving you a retweet because its of a related interest to them. Needles to say, while Twitter can be effective in the long run, you shouldn't expect to receive much traffic from it for things that are in high demand and that there are already hundreds of Twitter accounts that have done the same thing as you for that niche.
Pinterest
Pinterest is more for bored housewives that love to look at bags, shoes and cupcakes. But it can be used for marketing purposes as well and for all the other things like building brand awareness and promoting your products and services that have high quality images of them which you can share (pin) on Pinterest which can go viral quite quickly and send you traffic for a long time. But like any social media site, you will have to put the work in first, you'll need to get followers so more people can see your pins, you'll need to pin regularly and it can take a while before it starts paying off and sending you traffic everyday from all the things that you've pinned.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a very overlooked social media site by a lot of marketers today probably because it's meant more for businesses to connect with other businesses and to find employees for your business. It's like a giant resume site where your resume is your profile which shows off all your abilities, credentials and professions, skills, experience etc. Employers can use it to find an ideal candidate for their business. But while I do have a LinkedIn account, I've never really used it much myself for marketing purposes. I'll occasionally share something to it that is of interest to me or one of my new sites posts or something but I hardly ever see a LinkedIn post ranking in the Google SERPs. I guess I've never used it enough to work out how to twist it to my advantage.
Google+ Communities
Google+ Communities are Google's answer to a social networking service. First you have your Google+ profile which lets you follow other people on or get followers (circles) for. And then you can post and share things on your profile like links, images, videos etc. You can also create a Google+ Page or a Google+ Community and get fans (members) for it so that when you post something, there is a chance they will see it and visit your links but there will also be people posting and sharing their own stuff to it as well so other people will be visiting them. However, unlike any other social networking site, you can send more traffic quickly to your site using other peoples Google+ Communities than you can any other social networking site. Let's say you have a site in the funny pictures/memes niche. You can find many massive Google+ Communities that have many many thousands of users on them. When you post/share something to these communities, many people will see it and if it's something appealing to them, you can bet your back teeth they will +1 it and visit that link that it's pointing to (your site). In fact, I get more traffic from G+ Communities than I do any other social media site combined!
Here's a screenshot of my traffic stats for a new website I was working on recently. The day with the big spike is the day that I done some posting to Google+ Communities. All the other days are just days when I haven't done anything.
Obviously that's not the best example but I only posted a couple things in the morning using one or two accounts. When I post using multiple accounts at different times of the day, I get much more and it lasts much longer. Where as with other sites, it doesn't send as much as quick or last quite as long due to it getting buried under other stuff. I can provide other examples or conduct other tests for you if you want. But take it from me, Google+ Communities are growing to be the best social media site to get traffic from quickly.
So in my personal opinion, Google+ Communities are the best social media / social networking site to use to send the most amount of traffic to your site the quickest. It's the easiest to use, they have millions of users, they are free and they seem to be the most responsive when compared to anything else.
PS. I have deliberately posted this FAQ in the Traffic FAQ and not the Social Media FAQ. Because even though it talks about social media sites, it is in fact a discussion on traffic generation and which one can provide the most mount of traffic, the quickest.
So what about you? Which social media/networking site do you think is the best one to get the most amount of traffic from in the quickest time and why?
Thanks!
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hitmeasap
Best Regards,
hitmeasap Personally I'd go with several platforms simultaneously, as this would most likely end up giving you the best possible results. Each platform requires effort and time, building reputation and following. I have found Facebook to be a fantastic source of traffic and whenever I launch a new product or service I promote it using facebook fan pages and in other peoples content where I see it fits perfect. This is at the same time even a way to build up your reputation and following even further. Facebook is my personal favorite as I have had great results using it. That said, I wouldn't count out any of these options, as all of them would most certainly boost your presence and exposure. Best Regards, hitmeasap
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