There are still some very convincing reasons why social media is worth your time and effort, despite the tendency of many social media visitors to quickly exit your site and move on to the next one:
1. It’s Free
Did I mention it’s FREE! There are numerous ways to market a website. Almost all of them involve spending money, and of the ones that don’t, the vast majority of them are a total waste of time and effort.
Marketing your website with social media is free unless you’re paying for a consultant or a link bait specialist.
It will cost you some time but the value of the traffic that you can get in return makes it well worth while. If you’re on a tight, or non-existent, marketing budget then social media is for you.
2. Quick Results
With social media you can develop content that can be seen by thousands of visitors within the same day.
Building a successful website takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Search engine rankings can take years to build in a competitive niche. For this reason, social media is a great option for getting a new website or blog noticed right away.
3. It Doesn’t Require as Much Time as You Might Think
With the right approach you can get fantastic results with just a few hours per week on social media sites.
If you think that you have to spend all day on Digg or Stumbling pages to get some results of your own, you may be surprised.
To be a top Digg user you’ll need to spend a lot more time that a few hours, but being a top Digg user isn’t necessary to draw social media traffic.
4. Flexibility
There are so many different social media websites that Whatever your needs and your audience, there should be an option to use social media for your benefit.
You’re not limited to the same social media sites over and over again. If you’re not getting results in one place there’s alaways other options available.
5. It Gets Easier with Time
The more you use social media the more you will understand how it works and how users respond. If you’re new to blogging and social media you need to understand that it takes time and effort, but it will get easier.
Once you have established a bit of a reader base and you’ve hopefully attracted some social media users to your blog, it will be much easier for you to get votes and ultimately get more exposure.
6. It Will Lead to Other Valuable Sources of Traffic
Links will boost your search engine rankings and they’ll also drive click-through traffic your way. Both are generally high quality traffic sources.
Although visitors from social media sites may be less responsive than other types of visitors, success with social media will likely increase the number of inbound links you receive.
7. Building Links with Social Media is Safer than Buying Links
Purchasing links from other sites means running the risk of being penalized or banned by Google.
For some, this is a risk worth taking, but we strongly discourage this course of action.
8. Some Visitors Will Be Targeted
The biggest complaint about social media traffic is that it’s not targeted. Whilst this is typically true, visitors from niche social media sites can be highly targeted, and on top of that, a portion of visitors from general news sites will be targeted as well.
For example, if you get 25,000 visitors from a post on the Digg front page, maybe only 5,000 of them will have much of an interest in your site.
Still, that’s a quick 5,000 visitors that you wouldn’t have had without social media. Just because a smaller percentage of the visitors will stick doesn’t mean that they are irrelevant.
9. The Future of the Internet is Social
Although the major players and the types of social sites available may change over time, social media and social networking aren’t going away any time soon. By ignoring social media, you could be left behind by your competitors.