When you mention social media sites to business owners or marketing professionals, one of the first questions we often get asked, is whether these social sites can drive any traffic to a web site.
Recently we conducted an experiment for a client using a blog article that they had written. We then submitted that blog post to the following social media sites:
- Digg.com
- Netscape.com
- Reddit.com
- Del.icio.us
- Stumbleupon.com
- Google.com/Bookmarks
- Myweb2.search.yahoo.com
- Technorati.com
- Indianpad.com
- Socialogs.com
- Furl.net
- Diigo.com
- Wirefan.com
- Bibsonomy.org
- Looklater.com
- Blinklist.com
All we did was post the story on these social networks. We did not ask anyone to vote for our site to make it “rank higher” or to get it to the home page of any particular search engine.
Over this coming week I will monitor and report on the traffic that this post gets, as well as any backlinks that Yahoo shows the post receiving.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Frank Antonellis 06.05.07 at 6:28 pm
Now this is a great test that I want to see the results of! I hope you will also share some small details like the industry the blog belonged to, and if it was already semi-established. Nice!
Donald 06.05.07 at 7:06 pm
I recently heard a webinar on this same topic. They hired a person to participate within social sites plus they ran a ppc campaign. The result was that once the ppc campaign was over the traffic stopped. However, the social sites kept sending quality traffic even when the person stopped engaging the site. I’m interested in what you find out, for sure.
David Wilson 06.06.07 at 5:43 pm
Hi Donald
The lasting impact of the social media sites is something I am certainly interested in, especially the long-term links that come out from this test.
David
David Wilson 06.06.07 at 5:44 pm
Hi Frank
I deliberately picked an article and blog that were not well known and ranked so that I could get a better measurement of the social media sites impact.
David