Using Social Media To Promote Your Blog – Does It Work…?
Last month, not long after the submission of this blog to the search engines, I did say we would look at social media to see what, if any benefits there were from using this as a method of blog promotion. Well I know we are a little late with this & my only excuse is the amount of work I’ve been doing for this site 
Anyway better late than never eh..? So the big question is, do the number of extra hits you get justify the time spent on social media sites such as Twitter?
Lets Look At The Figures
Hmmm well I could be cutting my own throat here, but I would have to answer “no i don’t think that it does”, well not generally speaking anyway. You see each & every site you use, whether social networking or social bookmarking, all demand a certain amount of time in order to use them, the more you use them the more you find yourself being drawn into the game as it were! Before you know it you are spending a ridiculous amount of time doing basically nothing !
The Little Birdie Should Be Shot !
An example of what happens to your mail box!
Click to view enlarged image
That my friends is what I now get twice a day, every morning & every evening and that is just one of my email accounts ! I currently have close to 2,000 followers on this one account that relates to this blog. Now don’t get fooled here thinking I have all these friends that like to contact me every day! No, I am afraid that 99.99% of these people have never spoken to me personally, they have never written a proper email to me introducing themselves or asking anything about me!
You see they all have jumped on the band wagon as it were, somebody mentions on the Internet that big bucks can be earned easily on Twitter and now we have a multi million dollar spamming machine. Every single one of those direct messages above are automated & are sent out to these people’s followers in the hope of enticing you to commit your hard earned cash to some obscure scheme that is going to earn you millions whilst you sleep. Hahaha utter ball hooks, pardon my French! Just ask yourself this;
1. If you had stumbled upon some get rich quick scheme, would you share it with the rest of the world or just keep for yourself, family & close friends..?
2. If these get rich quick schemes are for real, why is everyone still working for a living..?
3. If these get rich quick schemes are for real then why is there is still so much poverty world wide..?
Now I know there are going to be plenty of people out there that will be up in arms about this article, but at the end of the day think about this, why do you think Google is now showing an interest in Twitter..? Do you think it is because they see social media sites as helping to make the Internet a far better place for us mortals to browse..? No indeed it is not, the one & only reason that a company like Google shows an interest is purely and simply the huge advertising potential that could be gained by involvement with these other companies.
Ok So What’s The Advice..?
Twitter is obviously just one of the many social media sites available around the Internet, so are they all bad…? No I don’t think they are, some are run along totally different lines to the likes of Twitter & as such are afforded far more respect in as much as search engines will actually check there listings as they do with dmoz, digg, delicious, technocrati & stumbleupon.
My Referer Stats from 3rd Sept – 18th Oct
The Results Analysis
1. Looking at the list above, those marked in blue are purely traffic generators & require a fraction of the time that social media demands. However it should be pointed out that whilst you do actually get people to visit your blog / website, the vast majority will actually click through & disappear after about 20 – 30 seconds (not good for bounce rate). Although having said that, once you have earned your credits by visiting other websites, you can often exchange these for banners or text ads which I think is a little better.
2. MyBlogLog - BlogCatalog & Mixx, require the usual social media stuff as in you are required to join groups, add contacts, create communities etc. Depending on the effort you put into this, depends how time consuming it becomes. I should also point out that whilst there are only 3 shown here, I have submitted many bookmarks to around 30 assorted social media sites, but not 1 single result apart from these 3.
3. Feedjit is nothing to do with social media, requires 2 minutes to setup & then is just left as a live traffic feed on your blog or website.
4. Neoease is actually the website that created my current theme on this blog “iNove 1.4.6 “, the reason I get visitors from this site is simply because I spent 10 minutes one day placing a comment about this theme, in fact I was enquiring about making the sidebars wider.
5. Twitter we have already covered earlier, but please bear in mind that of the 1,876 current followers I now have, I have had a grand total of 93 hits, so when I consider the time spent learning about Twitter, the tools needed to automate Twitter & the vast amount of spam recieved twice daily, I have to say that at this moment in time & based on these results, Twitter is not worth the effort.
To Summarize
Ok now based on these results I would have to say that no, I do not think that the time required on most social media sites warrants the amount of traffic you gain, I think your time would be better spent on filling your website or blog with content. I would however, go with Feedjit and also posting sensible & relevant comments in forums or in comment boxes on appropriate websites. There are a couple of reasons for this decision that are very relevant to the well being of this blog.
1. Time spent is minimal when compared to the likes of Twitter.
2.Those visiting from either Feedjit or from following links in comments on other websites, are visiting your site because they want to & not because they are being coersed into it. Therefore your site bounce rate is very likely to improve considerably.
3. These visitors are also much more likely to be return visitors or even to subscribe to your RSS or Email Feed. This has to be a big plus for any website or blog.
If you found this article useful then please feel free to waste some time & add it to your favourite social bookmarking site 
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