I have had a few chats with various people and companies that are on the Twitter SUL and I have reached a conclusion.
It is useless in driving traffic.
Many of the companies I have talked to have stated that even though their follower numbers are growing rapidly, hits to their various properties are still relatively the same or even dropping.
As for the people I have talked to who on the Twitter SUL who regularly share items? They are reporting the same trend via stats they have gathered via their respected shorteners.
To me, this makes complete sense. Many people that are joining Twitter are most likely not techie sorts of people and arguably many of the people featured on the SUL are more or so on the techie side. They are simply subscribing to some people to see what Twitter is all about, so why would they click through on links they didn’t care about before anyways?
Of course, you could argue that TechCrunch and Mashable are doing great because of the SUL, disproving my argument. This actually makes absolutely perfect sense too. Both of them write about Twitter apps, Twitter tips and Twitter in general. So of course people joining Twitter and are curious as to what it is are going to click-thru on these posts. But we can see the difference in referral traffic between Mashable and Techcrunch via compete data.
TechCrunch, while they write about Twitter a lot, still focus on start-ups and VC’s as well as other various items. So while Twitter makes up 4% of their over all traffic, double that and you have Mashable. This is because Mashable writes about Twitter all the time, hell, they are the self-declared social media journal of the web, so Mashable is hitting the perfect audience for them with Twitter.
While none of this has come as a shock to me, many of the people I talked to on the SUL were quite shocked that they weren’t seeing more impressive numbers. I suppose this is understandable, simply because many people talk about Twitter like it is the messiah of blog traffic, when in all actuality, it isn’t.
Guess Twitter is all talk and no show, but whos fault is that?
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On The Twitter SUL? It’s Useless, Sources State
I have had a few chats with various people and companies that are on the Twitter SUL and I have reached a conclusion.
It is useless in driving traffic.
Many of the companies I have talked to have stated that even though their follower numbers are growing rapidly, hits to their various properties are still relatively the same or even dropping.
As for the people I have talked to who on the Twitter SUL who regularly share items? They are reporting the same trend via stats they have gathered via their respected shorteners.
To me, this makes complete sense. Many people that are joining Twitter are most likely not techie sorts of people and arguably many of the people featured on the SUL are more or so on the techie side. They are simply subscribing to some people to see what Twitter is all about, so why would they click through on links they didn’t care about before anyways?
Of course, you could argue that TechCrunch and Mashable are doing great because of the SUL, disproving my argument. This actually makes absolutely perfect sense too. Both of them write about Twitter apps, Twitter tips and Twitter in general. So of course people joining Twitter and are curious as to what it is are going to click-thru on these posts. But we can see the difference in referral traffic between Mashable and Techcrunch via compete data.
TechCrunch, while they write about Twitter a lot, still focus on start-ups and VC’s as well as other various items. So while Twitter makes up 4% of their over all traffic, double that and you have Mashable. This is because Mashable writes about Twitter all the time, hell, they are the self-declared social media journal of the web, so Mashable is hitting the perfect audience for them with Twitter.
While none of this has come as a shock to me, many of the people I talked to on the SUL were quite shocked that they weren’t seeing more impressive numbers. I suppose this is understandable, simply because many people talk about Twitter like it is the messiah of blog traffic, when in all actuality, it isn’t.
Guess Twitter is all talk and no show, but whos fault is that?
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