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All Traffic Is NOT Created Equal

by SuccessPoint
7 replies
I keep seeing all these new Social Media products/methods focusing on "traffic" and not on conversion goals.

In my experience... the traffic you get from Social Media sites does not convert well at all. Social Media is a massive time sink that takes a long time to build relationships and has terrible ROI.

You can't scale Social Media campaigns effectively because it's hard to outsource tasks. The type networking you need to do, to build trust, is very hard to outsource (Are you really going to hire someone in the Philippines, that you never met, to be the mouth of your company online?)

Most people are not doing the proper analytics to track the true value of their social media traffic.

- I hear people judging the success of a video based on the number of views.... how many people actually clicked through to your site or took another action?

- So you get some people from Twitter to sign-up for your list by offering a freebie... have you tracked their actions after that?

- You get Stumbled and a ton of StumbleUpon users hit your site... how many people click on an ad?

At this point for me.... 80% of my conversions are coming from 20% of my visitors (organic search and ppc traffic). I get a FAR better ROI focusing on this segment.

Now I understand the "diversify" and "don't rely on one source of traffic" mindset. And you can't ignore the number of people on facebook, twitter, linked-in, etc. I just don't like how the new set of "Gurus" is focused on traffic numbers and not conversion goals.
#created #equal #seo #social media #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author kevinw1
    Very much agree - it's fun to see a Stumbleupon traffic spike, but it results in almost no sales or signups. Search traffic, and traffic from Web 2.0 content sites, are what earn money for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Freddie Crossberg
    Agreed.

    Although Social Traffic can be targetted and I have had some good success with it, it is MUCH easier to pay for quality traffic. My biggest ROI still comes from driving offline traffic online with direct mail.

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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    Yep ... it is fun to watch a good Stumble spike but it doesn't pay the bills. Targeted traffic is what you want.
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  • Profile picture of the author jennypitts
    I think everyone or the vast majority of the people are going to agree. I always say that the great majority of the people joining social networks does so to socialize and have fun therefore it is important to approach them with a goal and a specific mindset, otherwise we will be wasting our time. I have seen good traffic come from some social networks and have had decent conversions (considering the source of course)

    I also agree that targeted traffic will always be one of the best ways to get conversions, yet I always tell people not to rely entirely on the traffic. Most people overlook the fact that their sales page and site needs to be appealing, compelling, and should convince the visitor to buy. You can have all the best targeted traffic in the world but if your sales page is busy or your site stinks your conversion rate will be ZERO. I tend to believe that sales is 30% traffic - 60% Sales page - 10% product/service/program. THAT is the formula I create for myself and my team and it has always worked well for me. Occasionally I let those numbers fluctuate but sales always has the higher percentage.
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  • Profile picture of the author Janice Sperry
    Great post SuccessPoint. I totally agree. It seems like for so long all the so-called IM gurus have been pitching all the greatest ways to get tons of "followers" - traffic. I find it is a big waste of time and has never been productive for me. I stopped altogether a long time ago and deleted all my accounts. I do not have a single Twitter, Facebook, Stumble,.... account.
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    • Profile picture of the author IMStudentforlife
      I agree as well, the social media since was deemed the be-all end-all just because I guess it was so new and some guru$ deemed it to be traffic worthy.. I've always looked upon what the customer is searching for a solution to their problem.

      There was a article about the particular questions Google was getting that it was more geared towards Ask.com type of question. I've often wondered how Twitter could handle that when we're all reading about what that person had for breakfast that morning.. :rolleyes:
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