Boost Referral Traffic Through Social Media

July 20, 2010 at 9:23 am (blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, social media, social networking, twitter)

If you write it…they will come… One at a time, single file.  If you publicize your content through your Social Media channels, they will come in information-thirsty swarms! 

Original content is a great marketing tool to drive traffic to your website, demonstrate your expertise, build a meaningful relationship with your community, and generate leads. 

From a Google Analytics perspective, your web traffic finds you and your content via Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, or Search Engines.  Direct traffic comes from visitors who type or copy and paste your domain into their browser, e.g. https://fullyfamished.wordpress.com.  This traffic can also come from visitors recruited offline, like in print advertising, radio or tv.  Search engine traffic comes from people who “Google” you or people who submit a search query of keywords relevant to you.  e.g. Someone might Google “Boost Referral Traffic,” and my blog could be served as a relevant result.   Search traffic also includes Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns, or Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns.  Referral traffic comes from visitors who came upon an inbound link, or a site in the webosphere that links to your site.  I know, this is all very technical and boring.

Referral traffic is exciting (not boring) because you can easily affect it these days with Social Media.   When I publish a blog, I also publicize it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and several other industry-specific or regional online communities that I belong to.  

The key is to think beyond your personal profiles.  I have a little scribbled check-list on my desk of places to publicize my blog, which I’ll share with you.

For this blog, I will: 

1. Create a bit.ly so I can shorten the really long URL and track clicks: 
   (https://fullyfamished.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/boost-referral-traffic-through-social-media/ becomes http://bit.ly/beZlWn (put a + at the end of the link and you too can see how many clicks it gets http://bit.ly/beZlWn+);
2. Post to Twitter with this Tweet:  From my blog: Boost Blog Readership Through Social Media http://bit.ly/beZlWn (this is about 77 characters.  Twitter allows 140 and I save room for RT/Retweeters);
3. Post to Facebook Status as News Feed with Link;
4. Post to my LinkedIn as a Shared Update;
5. Share on my NetworkedEvents profile; and
6. Share as a Discussion among my LinkedIn Groups.
7. This is a working document, and I’m always looking for other opportunities to create inbound links.

Learn more about the Google Analytics Traffic Section.