SOCIAL MEDIA SITES BUILD UP CONNECTIONS WITH REFERRAL TRAFFIC, TUMBLR BIGGEST GAINER AMONG SECOND TIER SM SITES

Sites like Tumblr, Meebo and Pinterest not only refer traffic to Facebook and Twitter, but gain viewers in return

As second-tier social media sites become more popular with consumers, these sites are finding their place within the social media ecosystem, referring traffic to larger social networks, as well as seeing traffic arrive from Facebook and Twitter.

In November 2011, Compete analyzed referrals of US traffic to Facebook, and found that, in addition to retail sites bolstered by holiday traffic, Meebo and Pinterest were two social sites increasing in influence. Meebo’s US referral traffic to Facebook grew 314.48% in November 2011 compared to the previous month; Pinterest’s referrals rose 57.22%.

Pinterest is a social site to watch, as it is gaining users at a rapid rate.   According to Compete, the top sites visited by US internet users after visiting Pinterest included several social networks:

• Facebook, 13.94% of the time.
• Blogspot, 8.74% of the time.
• Tumblr, 1.67% of the time. 
• Etsy, 1.57% of the time 

As a visual-focused social network, it makes sense that Pinterest would refer traffic to other sites with photos and visuals, such as Tumblr and Etsy.

Additionally, larger social sites are referring traffic back to these second-tier sites. This demonstrates that consumers may be experimenting with these newer or second-tier social sites, but they also feel the need to share content from the larger networks and point it back to Pinterest or Tumblr. According to Compete, the following sites increased their share of traffic referred from Twitter from October to November 2011:  

• Tumblr's climbed 817.78%.  
• Meebo's climbed 262.05%. 
• Mevio's increased 48.61%.
• CafeMom's grew 40.80%.

While referral traffic isn’t a traditional measure of success for a website, looking at social networks in this way demonstrates the connectedness of the social media world. Marketers that want to test how their brand works with a second-tier social site like Pinterest or Meebo should work to connect their social media strategies and accounts to best take advantage of the increased interconnectedness in the social media ecosystem.

COMMENTARY:    If you blog or use social networks, and would like to increase the traffic to your blog or social network page, I recommend that you provide an RSS feed to all your posts between your blog and other social networks, and vice-versa.  In my case, whenever I post something to my blog, it automatically posts to Twitter.  I also use an RSS feed for all my Tweets from Twitter to Facebook, so I am covering "two birds with one stone."    I have not been able to get my RSS feed to work for Google+ and Twitter to work properly, so I cut-and-paste my Tweets to Google+ daily, to get all three major social networks synchronized.  The result.  My blog traffic has increased from 15,372 visitors/month at the end of September 2011 to 44,100/month as of today.  If yo do the math, that's an increase of 286.9%.   It works people.

Courtesy of an article dated February 10, 2012 appearing in eMarketer

 

Comments

[Jida Deng]

It works people.