How Social Media Marketing and Blogging have Altered Conversion Statistics

Written on August 26, 2009 – 6:15 pm | by oldschool

Social Media Marketing and Blogging have produced amazing results in terms of increasing visitors and brand awareness to websites, but it has also changed how a site owner needs to track conversions.

Recently, I launched a new website and I was discussing the projections with my wife – and for the record, she hates when I start crunching numbers and doing projections My goal was to launch a profitable website in a new niche market to create a new income source for us. Looking to my past success, I started to back into the numbers so I could predict what kind of web traffic I would need to reach my sales goals. I realized that I was modeling two very successful sites that I had a few years back and remembered that the traffic to the sites was not based on opportunistic sales from sources such as Social Media sites & blogs, but from targeted visitors from organic and paid search. Realizing this, I set my goals in terms of search engine traffic and not overall traffic, knowing that while Social Media traffic does produce sales, it isn’t necessarily targeted traffic, to is will skew the numbers, and very much so if you have lots of Social Media traffic.

Over time, implementing an effective blogging strategy combined with the power of Social Media sites can produce some great organic search results, and I highly recommend it for any business looking for affordably generate new business online.

Anthony Kirlew Recommends

Tags: blogging, conversion tracking, Social Media, targeted web traffic

12 Responses to “How Social Media Marketing and Blogging have Altered Conversion Statistics”
By Ruben Quinones on Sep 25, 2009 | Reply

Good post. I still think that conversion rates would not differ too much if you base it on referring traffic as most of the referring is not based on a direct search query and will most likely have a higher conversion ratio.
By oldschool on Sep 30, 2009 | Reply

In this case, the referring traffic was mainly from Social Media sites and not targeted (not direct searches, but shared pages from the site).

Thanks for stopping by.
By Eric on Oct 27, 2009 | Reply

I think by getting more traffic from various sources such as social media marketing and blogging, you will have a better conversion rate.
By anon on Nov 10, 2009 | Reply

What is the most essential part of marketing a website? I have always doubt what is about a website that will bring people to it. Now I have made out that the biggest factor is usually search engine marketing. It is, truly, becoming important in the marketing process of any online presence. Search engines can drive very qualified traffic to a website. If someone is searching for what your site has, then that makes your site more important for them.
By Michelle on Nov 16, 2009 | Reply

i do Social Media Marketing specially when promoting a new website or an affiliate product. Social media is more effective than offline advertising in my opinion.
By joel on Nov 19, 2009 | Reply

Well written. Blogging consists of maintaining an ongoing chronicle of information online. Short for “web logs”, blogs have become an extremely important part of the social media landscape.
By oldschool on Nov 19, 2009 | Reply

@ Eric – This simply is not accurate and that is the basis of my post. Most visitors does not equal better conversion rate. You might have more actual conversions, but the conversion rate is the percentage of people that engage in business versus those that visit. Social Media traffic is usually NOT targeted traffic, which is why the conversion rates are lower.

@ Michelle – I have not looked much into Social Media conversions versus offline advertising, but I know SM is exponentially less expensive. For affiliate marketing, please be aware of the new FTC laws that go into effect on December 1st that will affect how you promote affiliate products and services online.
By Anonymous on Nov 24, 2009 | Reply

Some years back we could easily get top position in search engine rank by using a few simple tricks like keyword stuffing, invisible text and cloaking. If you will try any of these tricks today, its quite impossible to get top ranking.
By Ayan on Nov 27, 2009 | Reply

Social media and blogging will be the next generation of SEO. Since Google is being more and more social, this will be the ultimate goal.
By anon on Dec 29, 2009 | Reply

The social media nowadays has definitely affected how we conduct business. It has given more opportunities for online marketers and it has also given a bigger chance to those small business that can’t afford the traditional way of marketing products or services
By Barry J on Jan 8, 2010 | Reply

The advent of so many differnt social media sites/platforms have been a boon to many older internet marketers. It many lower “coversions” but adding traffic to a money making site will still increase sales even though the conversion rate may suffer. I dont’ know about you, but i will take the sales every time.
By web development on Mar 7, 2010 | Reply

Thanks for a fantastic article.

I think that not only will blogs redefine themselves for brands, I think that we will see many blogs redefine themselves AS brands as they decide to try and monetize their efforts.

An interesting year ahead as things begin to resolve themselves.