Why Social Networking Traffic Sucks!
Well, not all of the traffic your blog receives from social networking sites sucks, but majority of it does. Jon from Smart Wealthy Rich recently blogged about Getting A Listers to Notice Your Blog vs Social Networking and I agree with what Jon has to say and here’s why.
My Experiment
I left a comment for Jon on the article Getting A Listers to Notice Your Blog vs Social Networking explaining to him that I’ve never been Stumbled or Dugg, so even though I had a theory that getting an “A Lister” to reference your blog on their site would bring not only more traffic, but traffic with saying power e.g., repeat visitors, RSS subscribers, commentators, etc. it was just that, a theory.
After reading my comment, Jon was kind enough to stumble my site (Thanks Jon). From Jon’s one stumble, Random Jabber received around 200 visitors. So, I decided to try an experiment. I Dugg my Icons, Icons, and More Icons article. Now, this is my first article on Digg, and no, I’m not in the habit of Digging my own stuff. Digg brought another 30 visitors to Random Jabber. Not as much as I would have hoped, but enough to see some sort of a trend.
The results I found from my experiment were interesting. The average time spent on my site from the Digg, StumbleUpon, and MyBlogLog users is significantly lower than any other referrer at 3.5 mintues and the average pages per visit sitting at two pages. In contrast, Nate Whitehill, Iffect, and Pro Money Blog are the blogs that send me the most traffic. Visitors from these three sites spend an average of 19 minutes a piece on Random Jabber and view an average of five pages per visit. That’s quite a significant difference.
Another interesting point is that during the small spike in traffic that Jon’s stumble sent me, my RSS subscribers actually went down. While that’s not a fool proof indication that none of the Stumblers subscribed, it’s a pretty good one.
Stick to Blogs
It’s quite possible that I’m simply using such a small sample of traffic from social networks that this experiment is not at all a good indicator of the true value of social network traffic. It’s also quite possible that my theory is correct and social network traffic does indeed suck. 
I have to believe the latter of the two is correct. I have the StumbleUpon toolbar and I do browse Digg from time to time. I know my browsing habits when using these two networks, and it usually consists of a quick peek at the site and I’m out. I have a assume a lot of others people are exactly like me.
So, with that said, stick to blogs. While getting Dugg can bring you a lot of traffic, don’t waste all of your time trying to come up with the perfect article in your quest to get Dugg. Do some good ol’ fashioned networking by contacting bloggers to introduce yourself, leave insightful comments on other blogs, and ask for link exchanges and quite possibly an “A Lister” will take notice of your site. The visitors you gain from these types of transactions are more than likely the ones that will stick with your blog and help it grow in the long run.
Anyone found similar results?
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Comments
I’ve had similar experience with Stumble Upon where I’ll get a spike of traffic, but little to no subscriptions. Regardless, I still welcome any traffic I can get!
I’m glad my site is sending you some good traffic though 
Posted on Mon Aug 6, 2007
In addition to blogs, there is also communities or forums. I get good traffic from web developer forums and there are several forums out there related to blogging. I would invite you to check the one I started out deron.
Most traffic I receive from SU and others don’t stay long unless they came because they were viewing my portfolio rather than hitting the stumble button.
Posted on Tue Aug 7, 2007
Brian: Yep, you’re absolutely right. The Digg users are there for the quick fix and then they’re out. That’s how I am when I do browse Digg from time to time. Getting other blogs to link to you is the key to getting quality traffic.
Dennis: Yeah, I’m glad your site is sending some traffic my way too! It won’t bother me a bit if you send more of it my way.
Sara: You bring up a good point. I forgot to mention the community/forum type sites. The forums that I’m a member at bring me a little traffic, although not as much as some of the blogs do. I’ve noticed some members of WSP making there way here, so that’s nice (I think that’s how you found me?)
Your point reminds me, I need to sign up for your new forum. I’m off to do that now. 
Posted on Tue Aug 7, 2007
I’m going to agree with the general consensus here. Unless you are in the right niche, Digg is about worthless. They don’t click ads and they don’t stick around. The only thing a successfully Dugg article does is potentially crash your site with the influx of visitors.
On the few occasions that I have had success with Digg or reddit, the sheer volume was pretty crazy but the increase in subscribers was probably zero. After looking at the stats, the average pages viewed per visit on a big digg/reddit day dropped to 1.1. A normal day it is around 1.7.
Stumble on the other hand, is by far the best social site to use. First, provided you (or whoever stumbles your site) tags it with the right category, it will send very targeted traffic unlike the other sites. Second, the effects are not as sudden as the other sites yet it can yield visitors for months after the fact.
I’ve found that SU traffic tends to have around 1.4 pages per visit on average, which is far better than Digg. I’ve also noticed that after a really good SU surge that subscriber numbers can spike up a little bit as well.
On average SU brings 3,000-5,000 visits a month, almost entirely from relatively old pages that were stumbled a few weeks or months prior.
I think a good combination of active participation on other blogs within your niche and building a reputable SU account is a great way to find more readers. Unless your target audience is 14-20 year old males and you write things that are very humorous/political/newsworthy then you are wasting your time with some of the other social sites.
Posted on Tue Aug 7, 2007
Agreed on the points!
Additionally, even if you get thousands of traffic from social sites It won’t bring you valuable comments to the topics you’re discussing about. After all, blogs are meant for it right:)
Posted on Tue Aug 7, 2007
Like others, I’ve found that StumbleUpon traffic is the most sustained stream of traffic. Other social networking hits generate a quick jolt of fresh traffic but it dies out very rapidly - usually in less than a couple of days - and those flashes don’t seem to increase subscribers or loyal readers.
Posted on Tue Aug 7, 2007
Jeremy: You make a valid point with SU’s tag system. I do like the way you can tag an article and have at least a chance of getting traffic that’s interested in your site topic.
Benedict: That’s exactly right. You can get 5,000 visitors a day, but if they aren’t adding anything to the community as far as comments, are not subscribing to your feed, then really what good is all of the traffic?
Rob: Dying out rapidly is right. I’ve been Stumbled three times thus far and each time it’s brought me a nice flow of traffic for that day, but the next day I’m back down to normal numbers.
Posted on Tue Aug 7, 2007
I think you’re right. The quality of traffic that you get from Stumble is usually going to be a quick 5-10 second peek and then off your site they go. BUT…it does help with exposure. With one of my other sites, stumble brought in close to 25,000 visitors in one month and I did experience increased link backs from forums and such. I also received an increase in comments. So, yes you may not get many readers within your niche but you may gain a few more link backs w/o much hassle.
Posted on Fri Aug 10, 2007
Susan: Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!
That’s amazing that one Stumble brought you 25,000 visitors. So far in the three Stumbles that I’ve received, I’ve seen about 200 per Stumble. I would imagine that out of 25,000 visitors, there may be a few in there that would hang around and subscribe.
Posted on Fri Aug 10, 2007
Well, now I"ve stumbled your article too! (hope you don’t mind!)
Nice read Deron… :D
Posted on Sat Aug 11, 2007
Hey Linda, thank you very much for the Stumble! I appreciate that. Glad to see you coming back and contributing to my site. 
Posted on Sat Aug 11, 2007
I think it depends on the blog Deron. I was never Dugg at iffect.net, but I was Stumbled quite a few times, and one of those times brought around 2500 page views. However, my RSS subscribers hardly moved. However, you’ll notice that if David Airey gets Dugg, his RSS subscribers goes up. The reason I think, is because among the thousands that like the article, they are also into graphic design, so they become permanent visitors. Therefore, if your blog hones in on a very specific niche, it might get more benefit out of the social networking sites.
Posted on Sun Aug 12, 2007
Hey Deron, thanx a lot for the linkage
SumbleUpon traffic is great (it depends in what category you submit a post to, if you add a review and if you add tags), usually when one of my post gets stumbled in the “blogs”, “blogging” or “entrepreneurship” category my RSS numbers go up. Digg traffic on the other hand is really not what I’m after, I would probably reach my bandwidth limit, and the crowd on Digg isn’t really “friendly” (from my experience)
I just got a link from problogger (31 days to better blogging writing project) and can already see a huge increase in traffic and time spent on my blog. That’s great!
Posted on Sun Aug 12, 2007
Armen: Hey! Long time no talk. Thanks for stopping back by. Yeah, that is a good point. I guess it depends on the niche of your blog and how well you stay on topic. Although my blog has a central niche, I keep it open to discuss pretty much anything, so maybe that’s why I’ve not seen RSS subscribers rise when an article is Stumbled? Makes sense.
Jon: No problem at all buddy. Yeah, an article stumbled under a “blogging” category I would guess would see a rise in RSS subscribers a most bloggers like to meet and keep up with other bloggers with similar interests and what easier way to do that through RSS?
Yeah, no doubt in my mind that if an article of mine was Dugg and somehow made it to the front page, my site would shut down. I’m on a small hosting package right now and it suits me fine, but it’s not ready for Digg traffic. Seems to me that really the only sure thing with Digg is that your site will exceed it’s bandwidth allotment and you’ll really gain nothing in the way of readers.
Wow, congrats on the link from ProBlogger! That’s great. From what I’ve heard, once you’re Darren links to you it means big traffic and reader boost. I guess you’re already seeing the benefits now.
Posted on Sun Aug 12, 2007
haha I don’t think the traffic sucks, I can’t complain about more visitors, but you do provide some valid points I have to agree with. Nice post just stumbled it!
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
Hey Shaun, thanks for stopping by and thanks a lot for the stumble! Yeah, I’ll take any traffic I can get, so no, it doesn’t “suck” but you get my point.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
Traffic from SU is pretty good for me its only about a minut below traffic I get from related blogs and organic search, Digg on the other hand brought terrible traffic. So I guess it depends on the article/blog but more traffic is always useful even if it doesnt convert.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
KingJacob: Yeah, I’ll always accept traffic if it comes my way. The more exposure your site has the more chance you’ve got of at least a couple of those visitors mentioning your site to someone else which in turn will allow it to grow even if all of the traffic doesn’t directly convert to RSS subscribers or commentators.
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
It seems to me that most users on social networking sites look at any link they click as a web page and not a web site. They care about the content on that and nothing else. I don’t think I’m quite as much that way, as I often use StumbleUpon and del.ico.us to find new blogs to subscribe to. As for Digg, I occasionly go through spurts where I use it. However, I do believe you can get a couple of loyal readers from using social networking sites, so I still try to.
Posted on Mon Aug 27, 2007
Jake: Hey, thanks for the comment. Yeah, I think there are definitely loyal readers to be had in some of the social networks, but in my experience they are few. That shouldn’t stop us from trying right? Even though the visitors may not stay long, I guess any traffic is good traffic in that it only takes one visitor to spread the word about your site and ignite a fire of incoming traffic.
Posted on Mon Aug 27, 2007
I read about the notorious “Digg Effect” recently on a blog (can’t find it now). It seemed that the poor woman got so much traffic that her site couldn’t handle it. (She said something to the effect that it would have cost her thousands of dollars in bandwidth if she hadn’t taken her site down!)
It seems that this kind of traffic is like a stampede. And it goes as fast as it arrives. Much better to build up loyal readers slowly through search engine hits and links from other blogs.
Posted on Tue Aug 28, 2007
Matt: Yes, Digg will definitely have that effect on your site unless you’ve got a lot of bandwidth to use up. That’s the thing I don’t think a lot of people realize. Everyone and their brother is trying to get on the front page of Digg, yet when/if they do, it just blows up their site. Majority of people don’t need a huge hosting plan because majority of sites just don’t receive that much traffic, yet people seem to think getting on the front page of Digg will be great for their site. I’m with you, develop loyal readers slowly. I’ve said it before, this web game is a marathon, not a sprint (or at least most of the time anyway).
Thanks for stopping by to comment Matt.
Posted on Tue Aug 28, 2007
Very nice article. I’ve been trying to drive traffic to my blog since day one just to see if I can get a following on my random thoughts and web related posts. I usually stumble my own post and Digg it too, if appropriate. Since I’ve done that, my analytics have been uneven and I get those 4,000+ hits in one day and then the next the average 5-10 visits.
I know when I Stumble, if it’s not interesting I just hit Stumble! again - so I know that’s what most people are doing with my blog with those 0 second sessions :|
I’m definitely gonna hold off on the Stumbling now and see what “real” traffic I can acquire.
Thanks!
Posted on Wed Dec 12, 2007
Mayhem: Yes, you’re correct and what you’re seeing is what I assume most blog owners see. You get dugg or stumbled and it’s true you’ll see a surge in traffic but that surge quickly dies down and you’re back to your normal traffic. Digg and Stumble traffic it seems are in it for the quick fix. They get what they want and they get out, never to return to your site. At least that’s been my experience.
I’ve seen the biggest increases in traffic when I had my blog listed on larger sites such as Smashing Magazine. The traffic came and just kept coming for quite a while and I’m actually still seeing some trickle in today. Plus, my RSS numbers surged upward. There is a bit of luck involved, but if you get large sites to list your site, it’s much better than the social networking traffic.
Posted on Sat Dec 15, 2007
I had a big bad affects of social bookmarking websites links, i had spent lots of time after SMO, but finally i got 0.
Now i am thinking it’s better way is blogging, you can get knowledge which you are seeking.
Some times you may not understand the topic posted on blog and you can ask the author, they always reply better and better as they do.
Some times may happen Author might miss out some point on the related post, that is full filled by comment posters.
So blogging is the best way.
Posted on Thu Mar 13, 2008
John: Yeah, that’s the great thing about blogs. If someone writes about a topic you don’t understand, simply leave a comment asking the question and usually you’ll get a reply! If the author isn’t to busy that is.
Posted on Thu Mar 13, 2008
Deron: Thanks for the reply, but what i am thinking is the author who is much more active on his blog will get more success.
Posted on Thu Mar 27, 2008
Great article, I am new to the social networking SEO world and am just getting started. It’s a bit confusing and time consuming for sure and even in the small amount of time I’ve been digg’ing and delicious’ing I’ve noticed some of these same things… I know that any link is a good link, but people tend to spend about 4 seconds there and move on. I’ve done a local blog for years but I didn’t know much about what I was doing.. I just used it to let people know what was going on in our town and answer questions… so I haven’t really done much as far as commenting on other people’s blogs… I’m the only one in my town!
So this was EXCELLENT advise… Thanks for blogging about it… I’ll see if I can figure out how to Digg you!
Posted on Mon Sep 22, 2008
I believe it depends entirely upon which Social Media site you are talking about, and which niche you belong to. I love Twitter as well as a few other sites. On Twitter you become a part of a community, and after awhile others who use Twitter come to your blog because they want to check it out, not because they want to get a one time thrill story like they might on stumble upon or digg.
So it all depends on which Social Media these visitors are sent from, on whether or not your traffice will increase. There are a lot of great Social Media sites out there. There a lot that you could waste too much time on also. Choose wisely when deciding to participate in a Social Media medium, and hopefully those who visit your blog will choose wisely also. Then before long, these new visitors will become regular readers, commentators, and subscribers to your blog.
Krissy
my main blog: Sometimes I Think
my twitter: www.twitter.com/iamkrissy
Posted on Fri Dec 19, 2008
Sorry for the delay here in responding! Been busy trying to get LogoGala up and running.
Chris: Yes, it’d definitely confusing and time consuming! I definitely don’t consider myself any kind of an expert in the social networking arena. But as you can see from the article, I think it sucks anyway. Just kidding, it doesn’t all suck and I’ve actually received quite a lot of traffic from Twitter (I didn’t use Twitter when I wrote this article). But sites like Digg I just feel are useful for big boosts of traffic and that’s about it. I’m guessing a lot of those visitors don’t stick with your site; like you said, about 4 seconds and then move on. That’s just solely based on some responses I’ve received from others and my own browsing habits. Thanks for stopping by!
Krissy: Yeah, you’re definitely right. It does depend a lot on what site is sending you the traffic. Not all social networking sites suck but I had to come up with a catchy title for the post! I agree about Twitter, I love it and receive a decent amount of traffic from it. I assume it’s just the people that started following me via Twitter that found me through my Twitter followers. I’m guessing that those visitors will tend to read more of your site and stick around a little longer than say, Digg traffic. A Twitter user will likely know you a little better based upon your tweets so they’ll feel more connected and stay longer. Thanks for stopping by Krissy
Posted on Tue Dec 30, 2008
I’m in two minds about social networking traffic….on the one hand it’s great to get increased traffic however on the other the quality may not be as desired…
Posted on Thu May 28, 2009
I completely accede to your thoughts on Social bookmarks. Also recently i read an article by a Google employee that bookmarks are just childs play. Blogs remain to be the emperor in bringing us links and traffic.
Posted on Sun Jun 28, 2009
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Similar results? YES!!!
First of all, StumbleUpon sends more - and more consistant - traffic than Digg: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/07/06/
why-stumbleupon-sends-more-traffic-than-digg.
But in my experiance, Digg browsers are simply looking for a quick kick - and will forget about your blog/site as soon as they get over that kick. However, people on Listers are looking for quality sites. Thus when you get one one of those sites, you’re more likely to nab a few regular visitors. And if you’re noticed to be a regular commenter on someone’s blog - then the person who noticed you is paying attention - thus he’s also looking for quality contnet. (if you follow me - that was confusing)
So in short, stumble-like sites are more likely to send quick visitors while Listing Sites and fellow Blogs are more likely to send regular visitors.
Posted on Mon Aug 6, 2007