Social Media Mavens / Experts

In this guest post Steven Snell (who writes about social media at Traffikd) examines the topic of generating readership for your blog through social media.

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If you spend much time on social media websites, I’m sure you’ve noticed that you tend to see many of the same websites and blogs on the front page receiving the most exposure. A few months ago I wrote a post at Daily Blog Tips that posed the question Do Small Bloggers Have a Chance with Digg? Through my observations and through the comments from many readers, it’s clear that large websites and blogs have a distinct advantage over smaller blogs when it comes to social media. Obviously, this can be frustrating to new bloggers who are looking to get some much-needed exposure from social media, as it seems to be the rich just getting richer.

One question that needs to be addressed is, what is the most significant factor that leads to the success of these large websites with social media? Is their content just that much better than smaller blogs? In my opinion, many times this isn’t the case. Is it because they have a larger existing audience? I’d say this is often a bigger factor than the quality issue. Very popular blogs tend to do well with social media, and with their incredibly large subscriber bases, they have a distinct advantage.

Take for example the front page of Delicious. Typically it takes about 100 bookmarks within 24 hours or so to get to the front page. It seems like almost every day there is a post from Smashing Magazine or Zen Habits on the front page. With over 60,000 and 50,000 readers respectively, a small percentage of subscribers can easily put these posts on the front page with a bookmark. On the other hand, a smaller blog with only 100 subscribers would need one bookmark per subscriber to make the front page.

So how does this affect smaller bloggers who want to get better results from social media? Essentially it shows that great content alone is usually not enough. It takes a gathering to build a crowd. Meaning, your gathering of existing readers and your network of friends can help to result in a bigger crowd that comes from social media sites.

New bloggers that are targeting social media, or those who have just been disappointed with their results to this point need to focus on building the gathering before the crowd will come. Networking is probably the most significant activity for bloggers in terms of gaining social media traffic. A blogger’s network includes readers and subscribers as well as friends and contacts who are bloggers themselves. Members of your network will be much more likely to vote for you on social media sites, plus you can openly ask for their help when you need it the most.

There are several different ways to get social media votes:

1 - Visitors of social media sites can see your link at the social media site and vote there (example, a Digg user visits the upcoming page, clicks through to your link, returns to Digg and votes for your post).

2 – Visitors of your blog can vote by using a button, widget, or link on your blog.

3 – Visitors can use a toolbar to vote (examples, StumbleUpon and Delicious toolbars).

4 – Social media users can share your post with their friends (example, the shout feature at Digg).

5 – Bloggers can email (or IM) others in their network to request a vote.

The only one of these that is not affected by the existing “crowd” of a blog is #1. Getting votes from the upcoming page is not really affected by how many readers you have at your blog, rather it is affected by how many people see the item on the upcoming page, the quality of the title (in terms of attracting clicks), the quality of the content once people click-through, etc. Certainly there are some small blogs that have success this way without a network, but this seems to be the minority.

All of the other four are affected by how many people are seeing the page and how many people are in the blogger’s network. Let’s quickly look at each one. For #2, the more visitors a page has (which is impacted by the number of subscribers), the more opportunities it has to get votes through a button. If a post only gets 5 visitors, the most votes it can possibly get through a “Digg This” button is five. On the other hand, if the post gets 5,000 visitors, its potential for votes just multiplied by 1,000. The situation in #3, visitors voting using a toolbar, is exactly the same scenario.

Item numbers 4 and 5 are both impacted by the blogger’s network of friends and contacts. If you have a large existing network and you’re willing to ask them for some help occasionally, you can get some quick and easy votes. Whether you’re using a share feature at a social media site or simply sending a private email, your success will depend on the quality and quantity of connections you have made in addition to the quality of the content itself.

I Don’t Have a Crowd. What Can I Do?

Understanding how all of this works is good, but if you’re a new blogger with a limited network and a small base of subscribers it doesn’t help you very much, yet. If you’re looking to improve your results with social media, do what you can to get one step closer to blogs that have a bigger reach than you. Work on building your network and send as much traffic as possible to your posts.

Here are a few tips:
1 – Still focus on content

In order to build your crowd you’ll need to give them a reason to consistently read your blog. Publishing high-quality content is the best way to do this. Although I said earlier that the existing audience is often more important than the content itself for social media success, the content still needs to be of a certain standard of quality.

2 – Dedicate time to networking

Most bloggers network casually whenever it happens. This is fine, but you can step up your network by making it a priority. Use social media sites and other blogs as opportunities to connect with other bloggers and get to know others who share some of your interests. Be active on blogs in your niche and make an effort to get to know those bloggers. Don’t limit your involvement with just A-list bloggers. Make an effort to get to know other bloggers who are at the same stage in the blogging lifecycle as you. In this case you’ll be able to help each other as you both grow your blogs.

3 – Funnel traffic

Most bloggers create posts from time-to-time that they expect to draw some attention from social media. When you have a post that you want to get some exposure, don’t just focus on getting Diggs or Stumbles. You can use smaller social media sites and niche social media sites to funnel traffic to the post. As visitors come from other social media sites they may also Digg or Stumble your post. If you have some other way to get traffic to these posts, such as getting a link from a friend or from a community website, do so. The more visitors you can get to the page, the better your chances will be of getting some votes.

4 – Don’t be afraid to ask for a vote

Some bloggers and social media users don’t like to ask others for a vote. While there is nothing wrong with this approach, I’ve found that other social media users who are legitimately your friends (not just someone you added as a friend at Digg) will be happy to give you a vote if your content is worthy, and you can return the favor for them as well. I get a decent number of requests each week, and as long as it’s from someone I know and not just a spam request, I’m happy to at least consider the vote.

After The Gathering is Built

Once you have built a gathering of subscribers and those in your network, drawing the crowd from social media will be incredibly more realistic. Not only will it be more realistic, but it will happen more frequently, as you can observe from the larger blogs mentioned at the beginning of this post.

What’s Your Approach?

How do you go about getting votes for social media? Is your success with social media impacted by your network?

With social media marketing, numbers get thrown around a lot. How many visitors did you get to a particular post? How many visitors were sent from which social media sites? How many inbound links were gained? While these are some of the reasons that most of us are involved in social media marketing, it’s easy to get distracted by the numbers an lose focus of what you’re really trying to accomplish.

Ways that numbers can be deceiving:

1 – Visitors from social media can’t accurately be compared to other types of traffic sources

Getting 1,000 visitors from StumbleUpon is much different than getting 1,000 visitors from search engines. It’s also different than getting 1,000 visitors from online advertising. It’s very difficult to compare social media traffic stats to other sources because it is so much different. The standard answer is that social media traffic is less valuable than other types of traffic, but this isn’t always the case. Niche social media sites can send highly-targeted visitors, and there are plenty of other traffic sources that aren’t the highest quality. Try to avoid comparing apples to oranges.

2 – Visitors from one social media site can’t be compared to another

Each social media site has it’s own unique audience. It’s very difficult to compare the the traffic you get from two different social media sites. Digg may send 20,000 visitors to a post, but the 1,000 you received from a niche social media site may have been more valuable. Because each site is different, try not to judge one audience simply because it doesn’t compare favorably to another social media site in terms of numbers.

3 – Social media can be manipulated

Social media marketing sometimes blurs the line between optimizing a site for social media and manipulating the results. A website that draws huge numbers of traffic to genuinely high quality content will have better long-term results than one that gains an advantage in order to send traffic to content that isn’t of the highest quality. Essentially, manipulating the results may produce impressive numbers, but the results will be disappointing if the content isn’t worth the attention that it got.

4 – Return on investment is difficult to calculate

With other types of marketing and advertising, return on investment is going to determine the success of the campaign and future efforts will be built around these results. With social media it’s difficult, if not impossible, to calculate ROI accurately. There are so many elements that are involved with social media marketing that don’t produce results that can be measured with specific numbers.

5 – You can’t rely on traffic from social media

If you have 50,000 visitors from social media to your blog in one month, the next month you could have 200 or you could have 200,000. It simply is not consistent and predictable. This can make it difficult for selling or buying ads if the site relies heavily on social media. One big month unfortunately doesn’t mean that the blog has turned the corner and that traffic will be lasting. It may or it may not. Of course, if you learn throughout the process, your chances will be much better of maintaining or improving traffic levels.

6 – CPM can be thrown off

If you are trying to calculate the value of your visitors, this can greatly vary depending on what percentage of your visitors are from social media. Visitors that come from social media tend to ignore advertisements, so your click-through rates on AdSense will be lower.

7 – Subscriber numbers may be inflated

If you reach a larger number of visitors in a day with a site like Digg or StumbleUpon, you may see that the next day your subscriber count experienced a big jump. Frequently, it will drop a bit the next day. I’ve learned through experience to expect a percentage of those new subscribers to be gone quickly. This doesn’t always happen, but it can be very disappointing if you’re not prepared for it.

8 – Numbers can’t show impact

Just because a post receives a lot of traffic through social media doesn’t mean that anything has really been accomplished. Hopefully it does have an impact, but visitors alone do not mean much if they never come back, they don’t subscribe, they don’t click on an ad, etc,

What Does This Mean?

1 – You need to know what you want to get out of social media

If you’re using social media to gain exposure and grow your blog, you need to know specifically what it is that you want to accomplish. Without a plan you’ll be left with nothing but some number that really don’t mean anything.

2 – Don’t rely too heavily on social media traffic

Because it’s not consistent, you shouldn’t rely too much on social media. I’m all for optimizing your website or blog for social media and doing what you can to help your chances, but sometimes it just won’t happen. Focus on building diversity in traffic.

3 – Keep trying to improve the results and effectiveness

The learning curve with social media marketing is pretty sharp. By that I mean that you can quickly learn a lot of things that you can immediately put into practice to improve your results. Analyze your results and find the methods that work the best for you in terms of achieving your goals.

4 – Don’t be too quick to judge

Because the numbers can be so deceiving, don’t judge a particular social media site or method of marketing before you’ve given it a fair chance. Don’t give up on a specific social media site because you didn’t become popular the first week you were using the site.

What’s Your Opinion?

How do you feel about the numbers that are involved with social media? Do you agree that they can be very misleading? Why or why not?