Study shows social network traffic is the least engaged

Social Media April 28, 2011 9 Comments

An interesting study on emarketer (published by Outbrain) addresses a problem many online marketers are faced with : the battle between keeping users engaged on the social network they started on, or entice them to click through to your website? It’s difficult to know at which point you should try and drive people through to your website, or whether you should instead try and keep them engaged in the platform they started in and look at driving conversions there, or further down the line. In the report, emarketer look at the type of content that people click on to leave a social network, and also how engaged they are once they do leave. The answers might be surprising, as they show that social media is driving just 10% of traffic to sites :

This figure is actually surprisingly low when you consider the huge communities that brands build up through social media. Even more interesting however, is looking at the type of content that people click on in social media, to go to an external website :

News content is clearly owning the social media stakes here, which is encouraging for publishers given how much the industry is struggling to accept social media. Ironic that the area that’s finding it most difficult to adapt is the one that’s benefiting the most! These findings can also benefit brands by telling them the kind of content that is going to make people leave their Facebook page, Twitter account etc.. and click through to engage with content further. People are on there to be entertained so brands can serve this by providing teasers of content before keeping the full experience for their site.

How engaged is social traffic?

In the study provided by emarketer, social traffic is shown to be one of the least engaged sources, with a high bounce rate and low number of page views per user. While search would typically provide ‘hyperengaged’ traffic (those users who view at least 5 pages), social traffic was less than half as likely to be hyperengaged. This points a lot to the psychology of the user journey in social media. While you might allow yourself to be distracted for a short amount of time if a friend or business provides you with an interesting link, it’s not going to dissuade you from what you were doing in the first place : socialising online. It also points to the distracted nature with which we use social media. It often takes place at work, where people might check on their Facebook or Twitter account quickly, but aren’t going to spend time starting to browse around other sites. This should also provide pointers for brands in social networks, when you consider the state of your engaged user. You’re only going to have them for a few seconds, so keep your content short, enticing and easy to digest.

Is the Like button driving traffic?

As well as looking at brand’s ability to drive people to their site, or people sharing their own links to sites within personal profiles, the Like button is an important consideration when looking at how the social experience can live through the complete user journey. Whether this starts on a social network or on your website. In a recent article, Mashable wrote that many site owners were experiencing huge spikes in traffic since the introduction of the Like button, some by as much as 500%. This would seem to be at odds with the report on emarketer, where social networks were found to be one of the lowest drivers. So is the Like button really effective in driving traffic? The timing of this article may have a lot to do with it, as the stats mentioned refer nearer to when the Like button was introduced. This may have temporarily ‘tricked’ people into leaving Facebook and clicking onto a website shared by their friends, but often now we simply skim past those updates in our newsfeed as we look for the first-hand content. Again it points to the fact that when it comes to social, people want to stay where they are.

This will be difficult for many brands, who still seek to drive the ultimate conversion through their website, seeing this as the point at which the sale is made. But the fact is that many companies will have to adapt quickly to the fact that their website is becoming less and less important, further down the pecking order in the user journey. How much benefit is it really to you if someone leaves your Facebook page to visit one page on your site, before they’re back in their own profile? Imagine the difference if you chose to keep that content completely within Facebook where you could have added further elements, such as clicking through to an app or adding an email capture? Then you could have a totally socialised and active audience.

Stats show this changing over time, as Facebook just surpassed Google sites last year for the average time spent on a site :

Whereas Facebook once started as the lowest among the big three, more and more time is being spent on there. This might not be big news on its own – of course as it grows in popularity more time is going to be spent on the site. But the rate at which this has grown and the fact that it overtook Google means a big change in the way brands and marketers will operate. It’s no longer just about the battle between the site and the social network, but the battle of how you’re going to keep your users engaged socially, before you can even think about enticing them to click on a link.

Tags