When you’re planning a social traffic campaign, I’d put the longevity (long tail) of the campaign as a higher priority compared to just the spike in short term traffic you’ll experience.
One way to effectively orchestrate you campaign is to identify the key groups, one of which you’ll one to influence and one which you’ll get little or no leverage from.
Influencers: will punch way above their weight. As opinion leaders the inclusion of your URL on their blog or web post could potentially send tens of thousands scurrying to your site.
On the other hand, you’ll want to avoid excessively using the Herd crowd. They’ll tend to parrot what the influencers say, and have little leverage themselves.
Again, the quality measure is much more important than just the quantity of people you’re able to reach out to.
Is social traffic/social media optimization just a gimmicky trick as Jason Calacanis declares “Anyone who hires an SMO firm is an idiot” in a recent post?
Granted there are SEO/SEM/SMO firms out there who do the equivalent of link or trackback spamming, but at the same time to make a blanket statement like that makes for sensational headlines, but as for reflecting the truth?
I think not.
Andrew, as usual your posts are well written and present truly interesting ideas. I would be interested in breaking this down somewhat. Explaining it for non-geek new arrivals such as myself. For instance, the social networking idea I’ve got, but exactly what would such a campaign be like; how would it function; how could it be used for various types of blogs (tech, political, personal, etc.)? It looks like I’m asking you to write a book! 🙂 As always, your information is greatly appreciated!
It’s a sound advice to me. Actually, while I didn’t think about the Social Traffic campaign term, I am in the process of implementing 2 full campaign.
For my affiliate blog, traffic already increased (75%), just after reading the strategies in the Authority Black Book.
It’s really amazing, and I am only using strategies from the beginning of the book.
Lee,
Thanks for the feedback.
I do my best to cover systems, rather than get very niche specific.
Social Traffic if applied correctly, leverages on human relationships, eg there is always an influencer, the herd, etc.
The essense of successful social traffic gen relies on the principles and it’d be equally applicable to blog, forums, social networking and other types of sites.