I wrote before on how to use Twitter to drive traffic to your blog. I also published a short case study about the influence Twitter-generated traffic had onto my blogs.
Most of the evidence of Twitter-to-Blog traffic was circumstantial though: Google Analytics only tracks referral site traffic. As More and more people use a desktop or mobile applications, most of the visits from people clicking on Twitter-ed links are registered as “direct traffic”, and not originating from Twitter. Quid?
Now the mystery is solved, thanks to bit.ly, the URL shortener I use for all my Tweets. Bit.ly always tracked the clicks per link. Via their website you could track exactly that: the clicks per link, which looked like this:
Bit.ly click per link statistics
If I wanted to have comprehensive stats, I had to add all clicks manually. In my case, a task I never had the patience for. I Twitterfeed all updates on my news aggregators up to twice per hour, five links per update maximum. This is done automatically for these blogs:
- Humanitarian News, on Twitter: @HumanityNews
- AidNews, on Twitter: @AidNews
- AidBlogs, on Twitter: @AidBlogs
- The Nonprofit Blogs, on Twitter: @NonProfitBlogs
- Aid Resources, on Twitter: @AidResources
- The Weird Bit, on Twitter: @TheWeirdBit
- AidResources, on Twitter: @AidResources
While all this happens automatically, the question remained: how high is the traffic “return”? I never knew, but bit.ly has now come to me rescue. They released more comprehensive statistics, unravelling the mystery of the relationship between my blog traffic and Twitter.
So Mister Bitly and Missus Twitter, how much traffic do you generate to my blogs? (Taraaaa):
Weekly Bitly clicks for my news aggregators
The answer: 28,183 visits. Per week. That is over 100,000 visits per month.
I don’t think you need any other proof about the profound influence Twitter has on your blog traffic, do you?
What did you say? You are not on Twitter yet, but are ready to get started? Read my Twitter for Dummies guide, then!
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, blogger, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order. (
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I like twitter, it’s the best tool to drive traffic to my website.
Twitter is really phenomenal, using it right will really help boosts your traffic and loyal readers if you’re lucky
i love to Twitter my day to day activities to my friends and followers. Twitter is much better than blogging because it is direct to the point and does not require you to type so many unnecessary words.
1h
Thanks for the tip. Seeing the small numbers in Google analytics, i was thinking about removing the retweet button.
BTW, considering the enormous amount of you follow i follow crowd in the twitter, would people care to click those links
I don’t know if your retweet button shortens the URL with bit.ly, but -as described in this post- that could give you a black and white figure on the traffic the tweets give.
I do, on my links and have been astonished by the amount of traffic each tweet gives.
It is true there is a “scratch mine, I’ll scratch yours” mentality in the following in Twitter, but not so much in retweeting. At least not in the social community I have created around each of my Twitter accounts.
And maybe that is key in all of it: ensure the quality of your followers. Maybe one tip: I *never* autofollow. This means that “my” social community would never follow me, simply because I would follow back.
I’d like to say they follow my tweets, because they like the content
Hope that helps a bit,
Peter