Do you use social media to drive website traffic?

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Permalink Reply by Cara Showers on June 13, 2008 at 2:49pm

My absolute favorite social network app has got to be ning.com (which is what Folio uses for this network). It's completely robust. Tons of usable features (not just fluff). It's very professional (but can also be used for personal networks as well) and easily customizable. It can be used seamless to the user—they'll never know they're on ning.com. You can serve your own ads. You can use your own URL. And best of all it's free. Here's what Fast Company had to say about ning.com: Ning Article.

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Permalink Reply by Amanda on June 13, 2008 at 2:53pm

I agree. I had originally been a fan of wetpaint.com but Ning has just gotten SO much better since they started, whereas wetpaint has been at a standstill. I didn't even realize this social network for FOLIO: was made on Ning until I went to create my account and saw the familiar "create your account" page, which I only know because I've used Ning before. If I hadn't I'd never know! Ning is definitely something people were looking for :)

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Permalink Reply by Peter Hobday on June 13, 2008 at 3:11pm

Hi - this may be off message, but the word in marketing is that social media does not drive worthwhile traffic to a website. Whatever names you will collect will not be responsive. Probably because they are not in a commercial / buying environment.

Hope that helps

Peter

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Permalink Reply by Amanda on June 13, 2008 at 3:19pm

I'm halfway with you on that. I've seen a remarkable amount of signups for our email newsletter using social networking, however unless you are targeting you specific niche, there is no promise that they are going to stay and buy a product.

However, in terms of branding and building customer relationships I think it's excellent. I read online the other day (and of course I forget who it was) that said that social networking isn't about monetization, it's about audience development; the monetization is just what pays for it. I still don't know if it was the dumbest or smartest thing I've heard on the subject ;)

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Permalink Reply by Peter Hobday on June 13, 2008 at 4:01pm

Amanda - yeah, I agree. It's probably a money thing. It's just that, like a lot of people who run their own company, money just seems to be so important.

There are always so many people in the company with great ideas on how to spend money. So few with ideas about how to make money.

So, fifteen thousand printed T shirts later, you may have built some great customer relationships... But then the bill comes in.

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Permalink Reply by Marcus on June 27, 2008 at 1:58pm

I think this is one area where magazine-drive social media will vastly outperform the more general forms of social media (Digg, MySpace, Facebook, etc).

Due to their narrow content focus, social media users of magazine sites will be far easier to target according to interest than on more general sites.

The reason people "aren't responsive" on more general social networks is that the users have little in common, imo.

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Permalink Reply by OlegR on June 30, 2008 at 10:17am

I agree with you on this.
Targeted social networks (just like this B2B network) are of much higher value to advertisers than general facebook/myspace type social networks.
Thus having fragmented social network with controlled/verifiable admission (by income, industry, age, etc.) will be of high potential value - good example asmallworld.net - an invitation-only high income closed network that charges ridiculous rates from advertisers like Rolls Royce/Virgin Atlantic, etc and has a 3-year long line up of advertisers.

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Permalink Reply by Donald Seckler on June 20, 2008 at 12:11pm

I guess it depends on your goals. If you're trying to monetize your site by selling items it would seem to me that SN will just detract from the sale. Although Amazon's review system would be SN to a degree, I guess, and that seems to be a very important part of their site.

If you're trying to drive traffic for on site advertisers it seems to make a lot of sense to me.

I guess it depends on your model.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Hickins on July 1, 2008 at 11:16am

Yes, I've used Facebook and Twitter, but I've only just started so it's too early to tell what works. I think Digg works for some people, but my experience is that it requires too much effort (or else I don't know the right tricks). I think that with all social media, you can't just send links and expect to get traffic. You have to contribute to the conversation, and then people will want to read more of what you have to offer.

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Permalink Reply by Amanda on July 1, 2008 at 4:51pm

I've found Digg to be extremely good for driving traffic. Whenever we submit a post to digg, our traffic spikes. We hardly every get a sale or even a comment out of this though, sadly.

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Permalink Reply by Bill Baird on July 1, 2008 at 5:40pm

Some pubs that are getting traffic and exposure using widgets. You can tell by the "page views" listed next to their widgets on iGoogle, etc. See article here:
http://circman.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=4038&prmID=1

Bill Baird, http://www.bairddirect.com

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Permalink Reply by David Blankenship on November 26, 2008 at 1:42pm

I like the Facebook and Twitter tools - Digg is great if you've got the type of content that diggers will promote. It doesn't make much sense to hard code a Digg badge with only a few Diggs. If you do have a shock value type story, you do want to encourage your readers to submit the story to Digg. But you don't want to keep submitting your own site links from your own Digg account.

LinkedIn is great for business / trade publications.

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