Ask any blogger how important social media is for their blog traffic, and they’ll (mostly) say very important. While search engines are key (and account for 2/3 of the traffic here at FBBB, so our SEO strategy is clearly working), social media is the third biggest driver of traffic after our subscribers.
As you can see from the image above, Stumbleupon is our #1 driver of traffic as far as social networks go. However, I’m not completely sold on Stumbleupon – I find that has a negative affect on bounce rates (or how long a visitor stays on your site).
Instead, the number that jumps out to me the most is the Twitter stat, that shows the micro-blogging platform is responsible for almost a third of all social visits to For Bloggers By Bloggers.
This is a huge percentage, and if we want to make sure we take advantage of that, we need to make sure we know who’s sharing us, so we can gauge their demographics and content preferences.
This will help us make sure the content we post is the type of content that’s more than likely to be shared socially, increasing our traffic and reputation as a blog resource centre.
The problem is, not all shares on Twitter use a particular blog’s username in the tweet, meaning you could miss the opportunity to thank folks for the hare which, in turn, will make them more likely to share future content.
The good news is, there’s a pretty simple way to manage and keep track of your Twitter shares – and here it is.
Using Jugnoo and Social Search to Track Your Blog
First, a disclaimer – I work as VP of Partner Strategy at Jugnoo, so I’m a wee bit biased – but I do firmly believe we offer some of the best tracking and social tools in the market today, that anyone can use, and that includes bloggers.
So, with that out the way, let’s get started on tracking your blog!
Create a Search Profile
Because you don’t always get alerted that someone’s shared your post – because they’ve just copy-pasted the link, for example, and not dropped your Twitter username in there – the first thing you want to do is create a search for your blog’s URL. This will ensure that any mentions of that URL, from the homepage to individual posts and more, is picked up. Make sure you save the search if you want to keep it active.
Bring Your Search Front and Centre
When you hit Enter on the search you’ve just typed in, it automatically creates a new stream for you. This is at the far right of your current dashboard set-up – so if you have more than four screens currently on display, you’ll want to scroll along and then move the new Search Stream across to your main display setting. Just hold down with your mouse and drag-and-drop over to where you want the search to be displayed.
Track Your Mentions Even Without a Username
Now that you’ve got your search stream saved and upfront, you can immediately see which blog post shares you would have missed, had you been counting on your Twitter username being used. If you look at the image below, you can see the Mentions on the left, which shows people using your Twitter handle. However, your Search stream with your blog’s URL has far more mentions, because it’s tracking the site and not your Twitter name. This ensures you miss no-one.
Why Tracking Like This Is Important
Now, it might be that you’re happy enough just seeing the “normal” retweets of your content, where you know about it because your Twitter username was used in the share. And that’s fine.
But think about it this way – that might just let you know about 10 shares, for example, versus 100 shares, because 90% of those that shared your content didn’t use your Twitter name.
Now, take that one step further – if your blog is to build a list and use as a first or secondary income for you, would you really want to miss 90% of your potential customer base..? Exactly. And because Jugnoo saves your search results indefinitely, you’ll always have an archive you can refer back to.
Simple tracking like this enables you to make sure you’re really on the ball when it comes to your content – and the great news is, you can start tracking for free. You can also check out some small but useful updates coming to the platform next week – click here for more details.
How about you – are you currently tacking like this, or do you see the value in why you should be looking at more than just retweets today?










Pingback: Saturday Showcase | The Texas Peach
Pingback: November Round-up: Best of SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing | @northcuttSEO