There’s always much made of social networking. Some of it is useful, and that’s undeniable. Whether it gets sales or not is another matter entirely. I’ve done a quick analysis of the social networks and made some discoveries which may interest you. I’ve also looked at the search engines and other ‘referrers’ to Imagineer-ing.
Since I started this blog:
1
WordPress Reader(used by followers) 274 (5.5%)
2 Google Search 219 (4.4%)
3 Facebook 218 (4.4%)
4
Yahoo mail
(mostly from Yahoo Groups)
102 (2.0%)
5 Twitter 95 (1.9%)
6 Goodreads 83 (1.7%)
7 Bing 33 (0.7%)
8 Yahoo Search 30 (0.6%)
9 LinkedIn 18 (0.3%)
10 Windows Live Mail 16 (0.3%)
11 Tumblr 14 (0.3%)
12 StumbleUpon 6 (0.1%)
13 Pinterest 4 ( – )
14 Networked Blogs 2 ( – )
15 Ask Search 1 ( – )
Total of all above 1115 (22.4%)
All other referrers 3864 (77.6%)
The itemised referrers are the common ones most of us regard as being essential to our statistics. “Surely,” we think, “these grand bodies are what drive traffic our way?” The figures above suggest a different reality. Less than a quarter of views are generated by people using these major sites! More than three-quarters come from other sites, like the blogs of fellow authors and book lovers in general. Personally I’m staggered by this revelation! Considering the investment in time and effort involved in these sites, especially the social networks, I think the results are rather disappointing.The fact that Facebook comes 3rd, Twitter 5th, Goodreads 6th, LinkedIn 9th, Tumblr 11th and Pinterest 13th would suggest that Facebook is the best social network to use, with Twitter and Goodreads as additional networks. That said, it’s clear that we shouldn’t expect miracles in our blog growth by our use of these. I find it most intriguing that Google Search just edges Facebook.Of course, we need to be wary of these statistics, which is true of all statistics! We don’t know how many of the WordPress Reader users originally came to the blog through one of the social networks.Still, it’s all food for thought.~ Steve 52.057772 1.143786
