What is Social Media Traffic?
Social media traffic comes in the form of banner and text ads found on some of the most popular websites in the world. Social media companies are able to collect a lot of information about their users and in turn allow their advertisers to use that information. Because of this social media traffic has some of the best demographics targeting you can find. This allows you to drill down and find exactly what type of visitors turn into customers. Social media traffic is perfect for marketers looking to expand their brand awareness by promoting shareable, useful content.
Pros:
Facebook back in 2014 passed 1.19 billion monthly active users. So just like Google Adwords, if you run traffic on Facebook you can scale your campaigns like crazy. Facebook also has awesome demographics targeting. Allowing you to target audiences that already show interest in your industry or product.
Cons:
Once again just like Adwords, Facebook is super competitive and because of this prices are pretty steep. Also, depending on how targeted you get with your demographics your ads will become stale very quickly. This will result in your CTR dropping and thus your CPM or CPC increasing.
Conclusion:
I’ve ran a hell of a lot of traffic on Facebook personally and have a love-hate relationship with the platform. I love the fact that if I can find something that’s working I can scale it to the moon. However, because of the nature of the traffic running a campaign properly on Facebook will take a lot of your time and resources. Finally, Facebook likes to break redirects so it makes it very difficult to track campaigns with some marketing tools.
Twitter Ads
Pros:
Though Twitter is smaller than Facebook 288 Million monthly active users in 2014. From what I’ve experienced Twitter has much higher quality traffic. Also, since Twitter has really been pushing out more ad products in 2015 there is a ton of opportunity. Just like Facebook, Twitter has incredible demographic targeting and has even recently introduced keyword targeting.
Cons:
The only real con I’ve experiences thus far with Twitter, is their lack of ad types. However, like I mentioned in the cons, they have been really pushing out new ad products this year. The other con is Twitter ads are pretty expensive out the gate, so unless you already have converting demographic metrics expect to have a large burn budget to get a significant data set.
Conclusion:
Personally, I love Twitter as both a social network and a traffic source. I would even go on to say it’s one of the traffic sources that I’m most excited about here in 2015. If you’re not running on Twitter yet, I highly suggest you start.
Linkedin Ads
Pros:
If you’re advertising B2B, then Linkedin is the place to be. Just like many other social Linkedin has great demographics targeting. Linkedin is also one of the best places to advertise your product to get in front of decision-makers. The traffic quality is super high quality for a select number of niches.
Cons:
One of the most expensive social traffic sources that I’m aware of. I ran a $25 campaign and only got two clicks. Unless you have a very high life term value for each customer you bring in, you’ll likely struggle to get Linkedin profitable.
Conclusion:
I’ve only ran a few campaigns on Linkedin and even though I did get conversions, overall the traffic was just too expensive for what I running. If you’re a recruiting agency or B2B SaaS company, then Linkedin is perfect for you.
Pros:
If you’re promoting content, that is very shareable, like this post ;). Then StumbleUpon Ads are a great way to get the ball rolling. I’ve had $25-50 spend campaigns to bring in over 8,000+ visits in a single day.
Cons:
StumbleUpons traffic all in all is very low quality. That is just the nature of StumbleUpon; the users just click a button to go the next page. Expect to have people on your site for 5 seconds or less.
Conclusion:
I’ve used StumbleUpon quite a bit through my internet marketing career. If done right, StumbleUpon can bring you links to your site, social shares and tons of traffic outside of the StumbleUpon community. Make sure your content is eye-catching and extremely useful as you only have a few seconds to capture their interest. Don’t expect to directly send StumbleUpon visitors to your sales page as it likely wont work.
Pros:
Reddit has 174 Million MAU the majority of which are tech “geeks” and gamers. Reddit’s traffic is very high quality if your product or service is appealing to this audience. Reddit is unique in the fact that when you buy ad space on their platform, you’re the only advertiser during that selected time slot. This makes it very easy to know if the traffic is working for you or not, as you have less random variables, such as new advertisers screwing your data.
Cons:
Unfortunately, Reddit doesn’t have very many targeting options at all. The only targeting options you have been by selecting what is called a sub-Reddit. This is essentially category targeting but makes optimizing campaigns very difficult on the front end.
Conclusion:
Unlike the other social networks, Reddit is community driven and is a big support of privacy. Be very careful with what you advertise on Reddit, because if the community doesn’t like it, it may backfire on you completely. Also, because of the privacy Reddit has for it’s users and lack of targeting options. The only way you can optimize a campaign is through split testing various different landing pages. Unless you’re promoting gaming or tech related products, I would stay away from Reddit until you have other profitable sources.
Ah yes, Instagram you know the “picture site” Facebook bought for $1 Billion USD?
Being one of the newer social networks that allows you to advertise it’s definitely a hidden gem.
Some demographics data include:
- 73% of users between 15 and 35 years old
- 48% of users are professionals; 46% have degrees
- Far higher brand engagement than on Facebook or Twitter
Currently there is a waitlist to join what’s known as “Promoted Pins”. However, if your business targets women, Pinterest is one of the most popular social networks that is almost exclusively women.