The social web is huge, from Facebook to Pinterest, when you combine them all, it's over billions of eyeballs per year. But, if you've been doing business on the social web for a while, you've probably watched things become harder and harder every single day.
We are going to see the insights of a study our social digital agency ran where we pulled 483 companies who all are leveraging Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
And in this article, we are going to show you whether or not businesses are actually getting any traffic from social.
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There's always a big debate as to whether or not social media is worth it for your business in terms of traffic.
This study is conducted to help paint a better picture of how useful social media really is for your business.
Important disclaimer, this study focused solely on organic traffic and not paid.
Right, from a paid acquisition standpoint social media is really simple. You spend a pound, you should make more than a pound. That is super effective even to this day.
If it wasn't, Facebook wouldn't be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn, they're all worth billions of dollars because paid ads on social media are still effective.
Sure, it's harder and harder each year, but it's still effective.
Now let's go over social media organic traffic over time.
Organic Traffic
It's safe to say that the traffic has died down over the years, and it's likely due to the fact that social channels are bringing down the organic reach.
In 2015 you could generate roughly three visitors per month for every 100 followers. However, now that number's just roughly two visitors per month.
That's a 38.6% drop in organic traffic.
Now when you look at traffic by social channel, let's first start off by looking at which channels drive the most traffic per 100 followers.
Facebook and Instagram are somewhat of the lowest in the results.
Instagram really isn't a shocker because you can't really add links to your posts. Sure, you can add links within your bio, you could do the swipe-ups but still, Instagram is not much of a shocker.
What is a surprise is Pinterest which was the winner by far, followed by LinkedIn and YouTube.
So, if you want to get the most traffic start off with Pinterest first and then LinkedIn.
We often get asked, how often someone should post content.
Well, in general, posting more should drive you more traffic. However, this study shows that after eight posts a month you'll start seeing a diminishing return.
Now, this is due to the way the algorithms are set up. The more that people engage with your content, the more of them will see your future content as you post it.
This is why it's important to only post high-quality content and not mediocre content.
If you're posting mediocre content, you may get traffic in the short run but as time goes on, you'll get less and less engagement over time and your numbers will die down.
On the flip side, if you're posting truly engaging content, let's say like the Gary Vee's or the Grant Cardone’s of the world, you can post multiple times a day, but most people aren't posting content that's that engaging.
It's hard to have a true following year-round and constantly filming.
For this reason, if you're going to post and you have that, sure post as much as you can, but for most of us, including us, limit the number of times you post to the content that is super high in quality.
If you can produce 5 amazing pieces of high-quality content a week, then do 5.
If you can do 20 a week, do 20. If you can only do 5 a month, then do only 5 a month.
If you can only 10 a month, then only do 10 a month, but limit your number based on the quality of the content that you're producing.
Now let's look at social channels and which ones prefer videos.
Alright, now before we move on with the next social digital agency strategies for high web traffic, have you ever thought about how much you should invest in marketing to generate constant business growth? Click the button below to calculate the ideal marketing budget you should allocate for higher visibility, engagement, and profit.
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Videos for higher outreach
You might be wondering which networks prefer videos.
Well, it's easy to see that Instagram produces the most amount of views by far, followed by LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.
However, it's important to note that Instagram auto-plays videos, while YouTube is much pickier about what they really consider a video view, which is why you're seeing the disparity in that chart.
Even on Facebook, as you scroll in your feed, you'll see videos automatically playing without sign-on, same with Instagram.
YouTube is not like that, so a view on YouTube is really a view, while a view on Instagram and Facebook isn't really necessarily a view.
Now while it's important to post video content on all channels, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube should be your top focus.
By doing YouTube SEO you can also continually see video views over time climb, while with the other channels, typically when you post a video it'll do well within the first few days or week, and then it dies down.
Now, if we look at how well live videos perform on each channel, the results are similar, with Instagram and YouTube leading the pack.
The big takeaway here is live videos don't generate as many views as regular videos and the main reason is likely that non-live videos can be optimized for SEO much more than let's say live videos.
And if you're doing videos, whether they're live or non-live, you should use free tools like Ubersuggest.
You can type in any keyword within Ubersuggest and it'll show you all the other relevant, related keywords that you can be going after.
The next thing we want to look at is how much revenue is generated from social traffic.
Revenue Through Social Media
So, if we check the percentage of revenue that each business has generated from organic social media traffic over the past five years, although it has been declining over the last few years the numbers are finally starting to flatten out.
Our social digital agency study shows that this decline likely isn't solely due to algorithms getting tougher, but that businesses are diversifying their marking approaches to omnichannel approaches.
This way you can combat it and continually generate revenue from social media.
Keep in mind, over the years, more and more social media platforms have gotten more popular, which then gives you more opportunities to monetise.
So, the big takeaway is that social media is still a force to be reckoned with.
On average, you'll receive two visitors a month for every 100 followers, and as you scale your follower count, so will your visitor count as well.
If you need help with your social media marketing to grow your business in terms of visibility, engagement, and profit, contact our social digital agency today and speak with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can build the bridge between the point you’re standing at right now and your goals.
