What social networks work for you?
John Jantsch over at Duct Tape Marketing looks at the value of LinkedIn for increasing sales, which poses an interesting question:
What social networks do you use and which ones work for your business?
For instance, on this blog I get a fair bit of (qualified, meaningful) traffic from:
What works for you? Tell us in the comments below.
I started a new blog a couple months back, and as an experiment, have only promoted via Twitter.
With other blogs I’ve been all over the place and dedicated much more time to promoting, however with Twitter alone this blog has gained more subscribers faster than any other, converted more traffic, and the biggest difference was in comments. Nearly every post has at least one comment. It’s pretty incredible!
Of course Twitter can only be that effective if you put a lot of time in it. It’s only as good as the network you develop.
Definitely StumbleUpon, and we get some good traffic from Delicious, Technorati, WordPress tags and Twitter.
I seem to do best from Twitter, but that might be because I haven’t worked at integrating any social media buttons on my site and I haven’t pulled in my Linked In and Facebook profiles. I wonder if I got serious about it if I’d do a lot better.
@Linda
Technorati, really? I never get anything from them (and judging by my AdAge 150 rank, ) it’s easy to understand why. Any tips for getting more Technorati love?
@Mike
Actually, I’m amazed I get traffic from any of these folk given the current state of this site. Since AvidHosting disappeared on me in November, I’ve only had time to get up this default design and don’t have too many widgets active. It seems that my activity on Twitter helps lots, and that’s what’s led to the StumbleUpon activity, too (as Twitter followers have stumbled entries they like). Still, you don’t seem to be doing too badly traffic wise. I’d say whatever you’re doing works. 🙂
@Kelly
Very well said. You’re absolutely right about the effort you’ve got to put into Twitter. The thing about social is that you’re not just learning some tool; you’re also engaging with a group of people. As I mentioned a while back, customers on social networks expect you to treat them like people. Funny, huh? There’s a big difference between a social transaction and a business transaction. Make sure you know which one you’re getting into when you start. Otherwise, you’re liable to end up with no transactions at all.
Tim, you’re doing well because of what you say, not your site design. And after you find the time to redesign your site, you’ll still be doing well because of what you say. 🙂
Thanks, Mike. I appreciate the kind words.