If you are a founder or member of a media company, chances are you have wondered if social media traffic is accessible today. Before we dive into an analysis of social traffic let’s state the four possible options. Google Analytics and other web traffic tools gather information on the following types of traffic: direct, social, referral and organic.
Direct traffic is the number of visitors that arrive to your website or app by typing in the URL or launching the app on smart devices. Referral traffic occurs when another website directs traffic to your website or app. Organic search is when users discover and connect to your content through search engines. Social traffic refers to visitors connecting to your website or app through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and various others.
In the early days of social media it was much easier to get traffic. It was far less difficult to build an audience years ago. Today companies may need to invest in a single social media platform or a collection of them in order to generate sufficient traffic.
One bit of advice I’ve seen over the internet is to pick one specific social media platform and develop it as much as possible before moving on to additional services. This approach can be more budget friendly and less time consuming. There is a constant debate in the technology community on which social media platform is best to start with. The above video of Neil Patel does an excellent job in explaining which traffic sources provide the most visitors.
According to Neil, Pinterest drives so much more traffic engagement than other platforms. However, for video channels like YouTube, publishing video and live video content on these services are better than doing so on other platforms.
It is important to conduct research on the trends. What is more important is do you have the desire and availability to put into social media. It can be beneficial to businesses but it also requires a lot of work. Also, if you have a particular social media platform that you enjoy using, perhaps focusing on it may be a better way to go than starting out with another option simply because it theoretically provides more traffic.
