On Saturday, July 25, I decided to do a quick Facebook marketing experiment.
I did this with one group, The Writer’s Group, and on three posts – two of my own, and another on a woman who wrote about writing a NaNoWriMo novel.
These were the links I put in those posts, links back to my own site:
Here’s what the traffic for those articles was before I put the links:
I was curious to see how the traffic would increase for those three posts over a busy Saturday when a lot of writers are messing around on social media instead of writing.
I did this with one group, The Writer’s Group, and on three posts – two of my own, and another on a woman who wrote about writing a NaNoWriMo novel.
These were the links I put in those posts, links back to my own site:
Here’s what the traffic for those articles was before I put the links:
- NaNo: 69 hits;
- Facebook: 68 hits;
- Puzzles: 28 hits.
I was curious to see how the traffic would increase for those three posts over a busy Saturday when a lot of writers are messing around on social media instead of writing.
So how did the day turn out? I’d put those links up around 10:30 AM. When I checked my stats again at 10 AM the next day, this is what they looked like:
So that’s quite the increase there on the last posts, but nothing much on the other one.
Besides that, I also got the following on those posts:
This is just an idea of what you can do with various groups on Facebook. Here’s what my traffic looks like this month for referrals, based on Weebly analytics:
- NaNo: 74 hits;
- Facebook: 103 hits;
- Puzzles: 54 hits.
So that’s quite the increase there on the last posts, but nothing much on the other one.
Besides that, I also got the following on those posts:
- NaNo: Nothing
- Facebook: 3 likes, 7 comments
- Puzzles: 4 likes
This is just an idea of what you can do with various groups on Facebook. Here’s what my traffic looks like this month for referrals, based on Weebly analytics:
My referral traffic according to my site editor, Weebly
Here’s what my social media referral traffic looks like from Google Analytics:
My referral traffic according to Google Analytics
As you can see, social media is very important for a successful website. You generate sales, ad revenue, and increased Google rankings. You also gain fans. I bet a few of those writers today will add my site to their bookmark bar, like my Facebook author page, or maybe even buy one of my books. Hey, maybe not, but oh well – how hard was it for me to put those three links, all to content I’d produced months or years ago? It was super easy, and you never know what may come from that.
Still, compared to my organic traffic, social media doesn’t make a dent. Yeah, organic is that blue slice of the pie graph up there, yellow is social media.
Alas, I doubt you’ll be getting that kind of organic traffic unless your site has been up for awhile. You’ll also need some evergreen content. Chances are good that you’re a self-published author, probably just starting out. You’re not going to be able to get that organic traffic for some time, but you can get this social media traffic. Give it a try.
Still, compared to my organic traffic, social media doesn’t make a dent. Yeah, organic is that blue slice of the pie graph up there, yellow is social media.
Alas, I doubt you’ll be getting that kind of organic traffic unless your site has been up for awhile. You’ll also need some evergreen content. Chances are good that you’re a self-published author, probably just starting out. You’re not going to be able to get that organic traffic for some time, but you can get this social media traffic. Give it a try.
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