Are Facebook and Twitter worthwile ways to drive traffic to a website

1. 77

   surf travelerposted 14 years ago

   I joined up with Hubpages a week ago, originally just to build links to a website I started 2 months ago. Now I'm enjoying Hubpages and the freedom to write about other topics that interest me and have adsense and amazon earnings as well.
   As for promoting websites, I haven't used Facebook or Twitter for traffic building. I keep hearing how important they are to build up traffic, but am concerned they will become a big time-suck.
   Can anyone share personal examples of how Facebook or Twitter helped to build up traffic with a new website? Thanks.

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      nikitha pposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I think Facebook and Twitter are most useful for getting traffic to a website.If you have more  followers and friends you will get more traffic.

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   Ultimate Hubberposted 14 years ago

   If you have a lot of followers on twitter that are actually interested in your niche and want to read the content you publish, then the traffic is somewhat good. Same is with FB!
   
   But if I have time I will spend it trying to optimize my hubs for search engines instead of twitter or FB.
   
   And, welcome to HubPages ST!

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      surf travelerposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the welcome UH.
      I'm enjoying this HP community.  It feels like my time would be better spent working on HP.  Still open to the idea of FB and twitter, but don't want to waste several hours a day, that could be better spent here.

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   vanchenposted 14 years ago

   I find the traffic can be good for both sources, but will hardly ever result in clicks.  That's just from my experience and that's from me spamming my news feed.
   
   I'm sure if you found a group that is specific to one of your hubs you could get some more quality traffic.

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   thisisoliposted 14 years ago

   To be honest I would say don't bother. Facebook is warm sector advertising for most people (inviting real life friends to join is a no go) and Twitter has only recently gained my interest because of 're tweeting' which gives you the chance to earn a  cascading effect of traffic and possible backlinks.

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   surf travelerposted 14 years ago

   Thanks for the feedback thisisoli and vanchen.
   Vanchen as a % of time working on web, how much time do you spend on FB and Twitter vs HP?

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   maruthirpposted 14 years ago

   I dont think it is worth while using facebook for traffic but twitter may help in some way. When we tweet some thing that will be captured by many other web sites and they display on their sites.

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   Mishaposted 14 years ago

   Aside from traffic generation I recently stumbled upon a different method of using FB and T and other social networking sites for making money. Too long to explain here, I wrote a hub about it.

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   waynetposted 14 years ago

   Yes...if you have a network of followers on each site! and tweets set up with hashtags and facebook pages all pointing to your best pages elsewhere!

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   Neil Ashworthposted 14 years ago

   I have used both Facebook and Twitter for traffic for over two years and have had different results from both in terms of ROI. As with anything and everything online, things change very fast in terms of terms of service so what worked last year on FB may not work today - the same said of Twitter.
   
   Natural search is where you should be aiming - good SEO, a clear backlinking strategy and ongoing effort (ouch!!) the part most people leave out.
   
   One tip for Twitter though, which does work (I've done this for over 6 months using various tools and seen massive results) - purchase a copy of a tool called tweetsbot (there are others but this is cheap and a one time payment) - around $50 I think - and use the supertweet function to tweet people an auto-reply for set keywords they tweet. Refer them to one of your articles related to their tweet - this isn't seen as spammy and can generate a lot of re-tweets if your content is good . set this one and leave it to run and it'll bring you constant traffic from a genuine source. Will it convert to clicks? Maybe, maybe not - but it will indicate to the search engines that your article is popular, raising it up in search for specific searches.

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      soni2006posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Neil, thanks for this incredible idea. I will check out tweetsbot. I think it will work well. I understood your concept.

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    WizardOfOzposted 14 years ago

    You could also set up a feed from a blog or website to post automatically to both twitter and facebook.  You can do this for free and the time cost is almost nil.

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    Joe8943posted 14 years ago

    I've seen decent results from FB when I first launched my page I gained a nice number of fans but it quickly died down.  My FB followers read my articles but I don't have a lot of ways to continue gaining fans on FB without paying for advertising which I don't think is worthwhile.  Maybe as I continue to build traffic and fans on HP I will gain more in other areas such as FB

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       WizardOfOzposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       It depends what you have to offer.
       
       Try networked blogs on facebook.  If you do want to use facebook that is.
       
       I agree, facebook will not capture a ton of traffic and/or conversions immediately but if you go about it in the right way it is only a small investment of time and once it is done, its done.

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    surf travelerposted 14 years ago

    Thanks everyone for the feedback. I'll look into the networked blog idea on Facebook today.

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13. STAFF

    Paul Edmondsonposted 14 years ago

    Facebook has the potential to be as nearly as important as Google for driving traffic.  The news feed is very similar to the search results.

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    Cagsilposted 14 years ago

    Facebook brings traffic when I share my hubs. I don't use twitter all that much, but usually when I do use it, it draws a few visitors.

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