Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter. I would not have written about it as early as January 2008 and compiled a list of the Top Travel Twitterers if I didn’t.
Yet when I looked at the traffic of Overheard While Traveling, the last site I launched, the traffic sent my way sent by Twitter was dwarfed by the number of visitors the site got from Stumbleupon.
Overheard While Traveling. First Month Traffic by referers
So shall I spend more time on Stumbleupon and less on Twitter ?
A good starting point for the Travel Bloggers interested in finding out more about Stumbleupon is the Travelexchange Stumble Upon group.
#1 by Chris (Amateur Traveler) on July 21, 2009 - 7:16 pm
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What I do is twitter urls with su.pr from stumbleupon which makes it easy for people to stumble the content
#2 by Gary Arndt on July 21, 2009 - 8:01 pm
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You are assuming that the ultimate metric is people visiting your site, and that the only use of Twitter is to increase that metric. I think Twitter has value in and of itself.
I really don’t care if people follow me on Twitter, Facebook or on my site. So long as they follow and are somewhat invested in what I’m doing, that is what matters.
#3 by Merrill on July 22, 2009 - 7:49 am
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Chris: I will give it a go
Gary: I agree that Twitter has more value than bringing traffic. But it’s the same for Stumbleupon, Friendfeed, Seesmic etc.
As I don’t have time to use all the social media sites, I feel I have to pick carefully the ones where I am involved. And the traffic they send my way comes into the equation.
#4 by Gary Arndt on July 22, 2009 - 10:37 am
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I don’t think it is the same. Stumbleupon isn’t really social in the same way that Twitter or Facebook is. You don’t provide updates. You can add friends, but the friends are for link sharing, not content sharing.
Twitter is one of the largest traffic drivers for me and also is responsible for most of my StumbleUpon traffic now that I use Su.pr. Likewise, Facebook is also a top 5 traffic driver to my site.
Also, there are ways to link them all together. When I make a blog post, it goes out on Twitter. My twitter posts are shortened with the StumbleUpon shortener. All my tweets go to my Facebook status. They are all interconnected which reduces the amount of work I do. Everything is driven by Twitter.
Given the stats you posted, I’d reconsider changing how you use the networks more than what networks you use. It is easy to get burst traffic from SU. Twitter requires a longer term commitment to get it to pay off.
#5 by Authentic Seacoast Resorts on July 22, 2009 - 2:08 pm
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We agree with Gary. If you are into building relationships with people, Twitter and Facebook are excellent networks to create communities of friends who share your interests. Relationships take time and commitment. But the rewards of good relationships are enormous. We’re grateful for people like Gary who are not just leading the way for others to follow by being everywhere as a traveler, but also by being everywhere on industry forums like this to help others form their own best practices in social media. And thanks to Merrill for creating an opportunity for us to have this discussion.
Doug @AuthenticCoast
#6 by Andy Hayes on July 25, 2009 - 9:33 am
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I am consistently getting about 1k pageviews from Stumble on days when a new post comes up. BUT, I think this is a result of my Twitter connections who are sharing the links with their friends and it is the collective Stumbles that are bring up the pageviews.
Agree with Gary, making them work in conjunction is the key (and they’re all a bit different).
And Doug is spot on: