Social Media Isn’t Everything: But still Win it.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Stop pulling your hair now. A must adopt media that brings Traffic and also does SEO for your blog Google’s way, WIN IT.
Any kind of publicity is good publicity and can bring you large amount of Traffic. Whether you get a link from A-list Blogger, getting your story on the top of Digg Charts, or from Search engines, for your site all possible resources are needed and well appreciated.
After doing the last post about Social Media, I was surfing through few other ones of Darren Rowse and Amit Agarwal.
In Darren’s words from his post- “in most cases the Digg traffic comes and goes quickly and doesn’t usually hang around for dialogue – whereas referrals from other sites is more likely to ‘convert’ either as a longer term viewer, RSS subscriber, newsletter member or comment leaver”
Darren did also actually mention- “Of course Digg traffic isn’t completely useless – in fact if you harness it you can grow a blog over time. It comes in such high numbers that even if only a very small group stick around it can be worthwhile.It also brings a round of secondary links – which can be good for SEO and lastly it doesn’t hurt the old ego and can give a rush of motivation to a blogger. The key with Digg traffic however is to work on converting readers into loyal ones. “
The points raised by Amit in his post while comparing Traffic from the site of A-List Blogger and Digg are, (1)After traffic floods your post they’ll at the most increase the count by one and leave. (2)The Digg crowd will never leave comments on your site but they’ll do so on the actual Digg page. In most case, the comments (or curses) from Diggers will make you feel depressed unless you write about Kevin Rose, Diggination or 10 Reasons Why Vista Sucks. (3)The majority of Digg crowd will visit your site for one-tenth of a second. (4)You might notice higher page impressions during Digg days but the CTR and effective CPM will reduce so the net result would stay the same. (5)Getting on Digg is unlikely to boost your page rank or search engine rankings – infact, there are cases when the Digg pages rank higher than the actual page it is linking to.
These may be confusing to a reader who may take with him all the negative points about Social Media, when it can benefit him in the direction he wants his blog to rise.
Why Social Media Networks are important-
Search Engines index you only after a certain amount of time. Any News is old News. You need to get to people as soon as possible and get maximum exposure to the story, so that people come to know about it and link it. Will you depend on Search Engines for that? People spend lots of effort, time and money to Search Engines Optimize their sites but when they say they do not like Social Media Sites, I cannot do anything but pity them. If you are not in Social Media you are seriously leaving a goldmine of traffic. A little effort and time devoted on these sites can bring you results never imagined, and its free.
When inbound links are the passing criteria for Search Engine Optimization, everybody runs for Links. Link exchange is the only way a few bloggers are left with and you will find 100s of blogs in their blogroll. Asking for links not only sounds scary to me but is also of little use, and is discounted by Google. Everybody says get incoming links, but from where is still a secret. All you need is giving right exposure to your content.
Search Engines send you traffic on keywords used in your article but not its Tags. On the User end when you search for information about any site lets say Google itself, the results that the search would lead is the site itself and 1000s of its indexed pages. On the other hand if you are using Digg or Technorati you will get latest stories written about Google. If you are interested in a particular company lets say Ford, and want to know about want to know about what people are saying about it, where should you be headed to? By mentioning all this I am no where suggesting the supremacy of social media sites over search engine traffic. For a blogger its best to use both for theirs pros.
Normally, business blogs are an SEO tool for static sites, and even if not links, mass exposure and getting yourself noticed by the experts of the field. Here is where Social Media Sites come into play. Its all about relationships.
Myths Regarding Traffic from Social Media Sites-
1). The traffic from sites like Digg is often termed as inconsistent and not much fruitful.
2). It is focused only on one article and is mostly non-convertible.
3). Visitors from else where are more prone to linking to you and subscribing to your RSS feeds.
4). Only the articles from influential Sites/Blogs or Spam reach front page.
5). Only your friends Digg your article and vote for you.
6). The job is done after submitting the article or the story and it will be promoted on its own.
7). It is just targeted to one article.
Now the Truths
1). Its very true that you need an influential circle to make your story appear on the home page, but all the Diggs and votes you get once you reach there totally depends on the quality of your article and its content. That is why you’ll see 300 votes or Diggs for one, in thousands for another and not even 150 for another. The only people who are interested in your article will digg or vote for you, and do not forget that there is a bury button along with every story as well. People do not hesitate to use it if your story is not relevant or of poor content.
2). The traffic you get from these sites is easily convertible. Once you have them to visit your site and provide them quality content, they’ll either bookmark you, digg your story, subscribe your RSS feed or leave a comment, and would never forget you if you proved to be offering a useful insight.
3). Everybody is hungry for more if they find the first bite delicious. They came to you for your first story, but nobody leaves the opportunity to browse through other chunks of information you are providing.
4). Again depending on the quality of your blog this traffic will link you through their blogs or write an article just on the point of view you put forward. The greatest part is these are incoming links, organically created and very helpful from Search Engines perspective.
5). These sites are best for building relations with other bloggers, and increase your contacts.
Its not traffic for a day. There would sure be a rush of traffic on the day your story reaches the front page, but it wont stop there. Supposing you have a daily traffic of a 100 visitors, and one final lucky day you get to the top of Digg, your blog will see a rush of 8000 visitors. Amongst these lets say a minimal 5% are converted, and 50% of the following become your regular visitors. Not bad, I guess. As it is this is not a one day effect, it continues, though not as vigorously. If you make sure that atleast you get one story at the top fortnightly, you will see a dramatic increase in your traffic, incoming links and your feed subscribers.
Exposing your content through the Social media sites will increase your brand awareness and more the people know you, more is your fan following.
Isn’t social media adding more sense to the word WEB, is this the reason we say WEB2.o.
Till then,
Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam.
