It is well known that creating, optimizing, and promoting content are the keys to achieving more website traffic and leads. In this regard, to compete in today’s online market every business should consider having a blog in addition to their regular website, and every business should employ the popular social media options. There are a lot of information about the strategies to be successful with each of these (which I will touch upon here), but for those of you who still question whether these are worth the time, I wanted to provide you some statistics that may surprise you.
Social Networks
Social media is about more than the number of fans, friends and followers you have. In short, it is about leveraging social media to get more leads and customers. 57% of small businesses say social media is beneficial to their business, which is no wonder since being active on Twitter and Facebook has been shown to increase the number of inbound links, traffic and leads. As a result, 54% of companies increased their investment in social media & blogs in 2011.
- Nearly 2/3 of US Internet users regularly use a social network.
- 52% of 55-64 year old internet users have joined a social network
- US Internet users spend 3X more time on blogs and social networks than on email.
Blogging
Blogging is a great way to add interesting content to your site so you can get more traffic and leads.
- Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic and 70% more leads than those that don’t.
- Blog posts that were shared on just Twitter had 113% more inbound links than those not shared on social media at all.
- Blog posts that were shared on Twitter and Facebook got 149% more inbound links than those not shared on social media at all.
- B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that do not.
- Businesses that blog at least 20 times per month generate 5X more traffic and 4X more leads than those that only blog a few times per month.
- About 46% of daily internet users read more than one blog every day.
- Two-thirds of marketers say their company blog is “critical” or “important” to their business. Part of the reason is that blogs are a great way to engage your visitors.
- 36% of daily internet users read 5 to 10 blog posts per day.
Don’t forget to provide social subscription options on your blog (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+) etc, and be sure to provide a way for people to email/contact you on your blog. It is also a best practice to engage your visitors, don’t just talk about yourself or your business.
RSS Feeds
If you have a blog, you need to ensure that you have an RSS feed link. Even if your website is a static one (non-CMS), you can still provide an RSS link on it that will link to your blog’s RSS. This is in fact what we do. RSS is just another way of saying you make it easy for folks to subscribe to your content.
Don’t think sharing on Facebook matters? Did you know that Facebook is now the most preferred way of sharing content – second only to email? I have posted before about the importance of providing good content, both text and images, behind the scenes views, Facebook only content, giveaways, etc. It is important to note that Facebook pages often get a high search engine ranking, so I do think this is an important resource for all businesses.
- 93% of US adult internet users are on Facebook.
- 41% of B2B companies and 62% of B2C companies who use Facebook have acquired new customers from it.
- More than 1/3 of marketers say Facebook is “critical” or “important” to their business – and this number has increased 83% in just the last two years.
- One out of every eight minutes spent online is spent on Facebook.
- Companies with over 1,000 Twitter followers get 6X more traffic.
- 79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend the brands that they follow.
- More than 1/2 of active Twitter users follow companies, brands, or products on social networks.
- Companies that use Twitter average 2x more leads per month than those that do not.
- 39% of B2B companies using Twitter have acquired new customers from it.
