The Twitter Effect
While it only seems like a few seconds have passed, it has been a over month since I started using Twitter to promote this website and blog. I posted two articles on the subject last month, the first was my novice guide to promoting with Twitter and the second was more of a response to those who questioned how I used Twitter to drive traffic to my website. Now is the time to post the final piece, in which I go over in detail what I have discovered using my methods.
First off, for the past month I had been relying almost exclusively on Twitter for new traffic. I haven’t been promoting on my other websites, forums, or other blogs. I have still been commenting other blogs, but not nearly at the frequency as I was previous to this experiment. The purpose of this was to try to eliminate too many other outside sources of traffic. Since this blog isn’t set up to generate tons of revenue, I had no problems eliminating other sources of traffic to verify some of what I was testing.
Secondly, it should be factored in that I only work on this website 3 days a week. Since my intentions are for this blog to be a personal outlet and not a business, I don’t follow the monetized ‘mold’ of posting every single day. Now that the lame disclaimer has been stated, on to the factual goodness.
For those who didn’t read the first two posts, I will briefly go over my tactics. Twitter is a social networking tool. Oftenit is referred as ‘micro blogging’. Users are able to send messages, or tweets, to people on their profile, but they are limited to 140 characters. I spent one week adding Twitter ‘friends’ by raiding the larger bloggers profiles and adding them to my own. After the initial push, I have spent most of my time building relationships with those who have felt compelled to check out my website or send me a message on Twitter. I installed Twhirl (a Twitter desktop client) to help facilitate this, and I always post a link to my latest and greatest blog post.
According to my statistics, 5495 hits have been brought to the website from Twitter.com. In my promotional plan, It was noted that I put links to this website and the about page in my Twitter profile. I assume that most of these hits are from people who clicked on the link from within that profile. When I send out links to posts, I use TinyUrl which come back in my reporting as TinyUrl referrals and not Twitter. The average length of time they spend on the site is slightly over one minute. This indicates to me that the majority of these hits are of the investigative variety to see who I am, or what my website it about. I did have over 2000 hits come from StumbleUpon, and I feel some of these may have been directly related to the Twitter promotion as to very few of my posts had been stumbled before I started this promotional push.
There was a decent spike in daily traffic after the initial push, however. I did all of my mass adding of Twitter profiles between May 2nd and May 8th. Check out the graph below, it showcases the daily page requests:
There was a ten day lull in the middle when I did not make any posts (a family situation kept me from working on my website or posting) . I noticed that each time I post, a nice amount of traffic is coming back to the website. The site uses a plug-in which will broadcast my posts on Twitter. There are almost double the amount of people coming back to the website each post than I did before I started with the promotion. This indicates to me that I was able to attain at least a fair amount of new readers.
As far as RSS readership goes, this went up quite a bit. Before I started the promotional plan I was hovering near 30 RSS subscribers. Now it is over a hundred. The number hasn’t deviated much from the initial push, so that leads me to believe I have gained some loyal readers. I have also noticed a lot more comments, and a handful of repeat commentators.
There was some negative feedback at first, but most people are receptive to new blogs as long as they don’t over do it. I never spam from my Twitter account, and I aside from conversational tweets, I never send out random links to my blog.
In conclusion, I feel that if I continue to use Twitter effectively, I can expect to continue to drive traffic and increase my readers.
I am interested to hear from those who use Twitter. Have you noticed additional traffic to your website after you started using Twitter more actively?
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:29 am
I have noticed a slight increase in traffic. I was one of the people you “mass added” and in turn, reciprocated the add. When I get some time together, I am going to employ a similar strategy, as it seems to work wonders for traffic.
So we’ll see - I look forward to the journey.
Sean’s last blog post..Western Digital Scorpio Free Fall Detection
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:46 am
I am using Twitter to connect to new (and veteran) users. I don’t use exclusively to promote my blog, although I do use Twitterfeed to announce new posts to my followers.
Rudy’s last blog post..EntreCard: The End of Once a Good Thing.
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:32 am
I would expect Twitter to be a pretty effective promotional tool but it has to be used intelligently respectful. Spamming won’t work (as it shouldn’t).
In fact I think Twitter (and FriendFeed) will cause a lot of dangers and opportunities for bloggers:
-comment defragmentation;
-less time for users to follow a blog;
The smart bloggers will figure out how to incorporate these new tools to their benefit (but it’s going to require a lot of creative faith.)
I’m glad you tracked your stats to get a rough look at the Twitterfly Effect. It’s very valuable info. Thanks!
Phil’s last blog post..Social Media Finally Expained in Plain English by CommonCraft
June 4th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Interesting post, thanks Scott.
I like the experimental approach. From my own experience, Twitter is a useful promotional tool, but it should not (for the moment) be the only one in the mix. My own website, which is primarily about Twitter, started in April. I have used a variety of channels to promote the blog including commenting on other blogs, placing a link on Wikipedia (quickly removed!) and posting on Twitter. Of course, I have also focused on SEO by tagging appropriately, using relevant outgoing links, etc.
To date, I am finding that Twitter provides about 10 percent of my traffic. It’s early days yet, but I think the bottom line is that bloggers need to use a range of promotional tools, of which Twitter is one.
Incidentally in a recent post on my own blog, I discuss my findings that a majority of the top Twitter users are bloggers. Clearly, they are getting mileage out of Twitter.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Wow. I’ve been avoiding Twitter like the plague because I don’t need anymore things to suck up my time. However, this article has made me a believer! I’m going to open an account right now.
Rita’s last blog post..Starting a business after the death of a Pet
June 6th, 2008 at 8:35 am
[…] over at Man Vs. Blog, has been exploring his use of Twitter and has a 3 part series worth […]
June 8th, 2008 at 3:31 am
Interesting post, Scott - thanks for sharing!
For me, it’s still the comments on other blogs who bring the traffic. But twitter offers me the opportunity to find interesting blog postings - like this one. All the people I am following at twitter have interesting blogs, and I have the impression that twitter makes it easier for me to have a look at them regularly.
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June 11th, 2008 at 9:10 am
First time visiting here for me. You just added me on Twitter which is how I found the site. I’m not sure if I should feel like this was spam or not. I had no idea who you were before you added me on Twitter, but I like the information on your site so I don’t really feel like its a bad thing that you’re going around and promoting the site.
It is a bit odd to have the random person add you on Twitter, but you’ve made it clear that you don’t run this site for money and its not plastered with ads, so I’m okay with it. Interesting experiment, now to find more motivation to write on my own blog.
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June 11th, 2008 at 11:23 am
@Dave see, If you read my earlier posts, I liken Twitter ads more to fliers outside of rock shows. I’ll never message you, so its not spam. It’s only spam when I take an active approach to promotion. All I do is hand out a virtual flier. I add you, you see my site or profile and decide for yourself!
Thanks for the comment!
Cheers
June 11th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
I have started using Twitter recently and it has definitely started driving traffic my way, although on a small scale (probably due to the small amount of time and energy I devote to Twitter).
I have tried to connect to people I think may be interested in the topic of my blog, so that I will get more than one quick glance to see who I am.
Hadassah’s last blog post..Anti-Semitism in Iranian Blogs
June 12th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I think I’m another one of the people you added on Twitter…and, I thought I’d say thank you. I like finding new blogs, but it’s more difficult to do so just on the basis or linkage and search results, which are relatively impersonal. Twitter does add the “real person” element to a blog and makes it more interesting - to me, at least. And I wouldn’t be surprised if twitter works as a promotional tool if used respectfully, because I think a lot of twitterers would appreciate learning about new things and new people.
June 12th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
[…] just located this post from Scott Sweeney. He used Twitter to boost traffic to his […]
June 17th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Scott:
This was a VERY INTERESTING analysis on several fronts.
First of all, I can strongly identify with the “non-monetized” model for my blog. I have no form of advertising either; therefore, I don’t rely on Google ranking nor do I feel the need to post every single day (at minimum I post 2 times a week, sometimes more).
And secondly, I have begun immersing myself in the world of social media - something I had been avoiding for months primarily b/c I didn’t feel the need for it. It was more like “I was perplexed by it all.” But thanks to my attendance at SOBCon08 (this year in Chicago - you should go next year - it’s GREAT), I was exposed to Twitter.
Soon afterwards, I became a Twitterer convert and love it. I loved your analysis of the impact Twitter has had on your site. I agree with your assessment because the same has been true for me in almost every respect.
You did a great job analyzing the impact of Twitter by isolating it to just that form of social media.
I want to say more but I’m afraid it’ll turn into a post. LOL. So I’ll stop. But suffice to say, I enjoyed this post. Very excellent.
Stephen Hopson’s last blog post..Changing Your Perceptions…Can You Do It?
June 17th, 2008 at 7:58 am
@Stephen
Thanks for the praise. I think I am going to go even more detail in the future but I wanted to just sort of high level it for now. I, myself, am still new to Twitter and don’t know the long term effects it will have.
But it will probably be harder to isolate Twitter specific traffic in the future because I am going to start revisiting my other ways of building traffic.
Thank you for the visit, I checked out you blog, it is impressive!
Scott
June 19th, 2008 at 7:21 am
This series was excellent Scott. Thanks for taking the time to post your results. I found you thru someone that I follow on Twitter, and to echo what a prior commenter mentioned, I like finding new blogs via twitter as well.
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:47 am
[…] (Here are the links to my previous Twitter columns: Using Twitter to Increase Readers and Make Friends, Don’t Take Promotional Personal with Twitter, and The Twitter Effect) […]
August 20th, 2008 at 6:50 am
[…] (Here are the links to my previous Twitter columns: Using Twitter to Increase Readers and Make Friends, Don’t Take Promotional Personal with Twitter, and The Twitter Effect) […]