Tired of chasing every social media marketing channel to grow your blog?
I know it is difficult.
To make your life easier I asked the following question from the leading social media Gurus.
Which is your favourite social media marketing channel to drive traffic to your blog or website and why?
I am sure after reading this post you will have the crystal clear idea about the best social media channel (s) to improve your blogging plan.
After reading this post, don’t forget to add your favourite traffic source in the comments below.
Enjoy!
Chris Brogan is a professional speaker, New York Times bestselling author, and blogger.
Google+ has become my best traffic driver because I can precis the story there and give people more of a lead in to what I’m thinking.
Jay Baer is a tequila-loving, hype-free social media strategy consultant and social media keynote speaker. I’m a digital marketing pioneer, and have worked with more than 700 companies since 1994, including 29 of the Fortune 500. Author of the very popular Convince & Convert blog (named the #3 blog in social media), and the co-author of the best-selling social media book.
Twitter is still the most reliable driver of traffic to Convince & Convert. That could partially be a self-fulfilling prophecy as I spend more time on Twitter than elsewhere. That’s one of the tactics I’ll be testing this year, to see if time spent can be correlated with traffic driven.
Neil Patel is the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. Through his entrepreneurial career Neil has helped large corporations such as Amazon, AOL, GM, HP and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal.
Twitter is my favorite social site. It’s very predictable and you can consistently drive traffic through it if you have a powerful Twitter account or if you have a website that has a solid user base.
Kristi Hines is a social media enthusiast and blogger at Kikolani which focuses on blog marketing topics including blogging tips and social networking strategies. She also contributes to many other sites as a freelance writer covering online marketing topics for businesses including search and social marketing optimization. When she’s not on the computer, her personal hobbies include photography, tennis, and salsa dancing!
My favorite social network to drive traffic to my blog is definitely Twitter. Not only can you tweet your latest post to your audience, but you can also set up searches for questions that other Twitter users are asking that might relate to one of your posts.
For example, I have a stream set up in HootSuite for the search:
how to WordPress? -filter:links.
This stream monitors anyone who asks how to do something in WordPress. Many of the questions end up being about how to set up a blog in WordPress, to which I can respond with a link to my post on 70+ Resources for Starting a WordPress blog.
It makes Twitter one of the best social networks for blog post promotion!
David Risley is a professional blogger, entrepreneur, and online marketer. Having generated over $1.3 million online as a blogger, today he teaches bloggers how to turn their passions into a solid, profitable business through a combination of blogging and internet marketing.
For me, Facebook tends to outrank Twitter in terms of traffic, but both do relatively well for me. Google Plus is behind the other two, but considering how little time I’ve invested in the network until recently, it is pretty good. So, in terms of ROI, I think Google Plus might have the chance to outrank all else. Time will tell.
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, award winning social media publisher and author Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine . He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing System and Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network that trains and licenses small business marketing consultants around the world.
While Facebook still drives significant and increasing traffic to my site, my favorite is Google+. With the addition of author highlighting the Google Plus profile has become a great way for all of my content to stand out in Google searches.
Danny Brown is Director of Retention and Social Media at Jugnoo, Inc., and an award-winning marketer and blogger. His blog is recognized as one of the leading marketing blogs in the world, and is featured in the AdAge Power 150, Hubspot’s Hot 100 Marketing Blogs, SME’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2011 list and Canada’s Top 50 Marketing Blogs. In 2010, it won the Hive Award for Best Social Media Blog at the South by South West festival. Danny is also the author of The Parables of Business.
While it might be losing face in the eyes of some people online, Twitter is still my favourite.
It’s powerful to share easily and quickly (especially via relevant hashtag conversations), and is the natural platform to extend the conversation from blog post to quick snippets of discussion.
Also, with something like Livefyre Comments, your Twitter conversation becomes a natural part of the comment section of the post itself. So, for me, Twitter is still far more beneficial and effective than Google+, Facebook, or anywhere else.
David Berkowitz is Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation for Agency 360i. A frequent speaker and media pundit, he has been published hundreds of times in Media Post, Ad Age, eMarketer, and elsewhere.
For driving traffic, my favorite social network is Twitter because there’s little else to do on Twitter beyond clicking links and responding to people. For getting more dialogue, debate, and interaction, I often prefer Facebook and Google+.
Neal Schaffer is the creator of the Windmill Networking Blog on Social Media Strategy, considered one of the top 100 marketing blogs in the world according to AdAge. He is also the author of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing and Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn. A social media educator, Neal helps businesses strategically leverage social media as a speaker, coach, trainer, and social media strategy consultant.
I don’t think about social media networks as traffic-generating websites – they are communities for networking, communication, and information-sharing.
That being said, as owner of a social media for business content website, my audience tends to be more active in certain social networks more than others.
Furthermore, the functionality in all of these networks differs, so some are more able to virally increase traffic more than others. For that reason, I have to go with Twitter. I have built up a sizable following of relevant followers on Twitter that are thirsty for information – and Twitter culture is one of ReTweeting and sharing. If you establish your own platform on Twitter with relevant followers, it can provide you considerable traffic to your website.
Geoff Livingston has worked as a public relations strategist in the Washington, D.C. region for 15 years. Dubbed a “local blogging guru” by the Washington Post, Geoff’s award-winning book on new media “Now is Gone” was released in 2007. The book has been cited by the Wall Street Journal as a valuable resource for social media.
That’s easy! Twitter, because it drives the most traffic for me, and because it’s very public and measurable. Both Facebook and Google+ are somewhat measurable, but harder to trace conversation.
Ana Hoffman is the founder of Traffic Generation Cafe which brings you the most profit-pulling free traffic generation tips, tricks, and resources, so that your website and business will go where no website has gone before.
My social media strategy is all about the numbers – I go where my audience takes me.
Twitter usually brings the most traffic, but it also yields the least amount of conversion, page views, and the highest bounce rate.
Facebook is more about quality. My Facebook traffic is definitely much more interested in what Traffic Generation Cafe has to offer.
But I am not discounting Google+ either. It’s been quickly catching up to the other two and, in some months, even surpassed my traffic from Facebook.
Personally, I’d love to stick with only one network, and I’d choose Google+ for that, but my readership is diverse and I have to be as well.
Your Turn
Did you find the answers useful?
If yes, how will you apply the learning from this post to improve your blog’s traffic from social media marketing?
Don’t forget to add your thoughts in the comments below and share this post on Twitter.