Twitter for Traffic or ROI in online marketing

So I am on the lookout for the business value of Twitter and how it can provide an ROI and/or traffic.  I have been blogging little about anything of value, but have read many more articles on the subject than I am quoting.  Remember these and other Internet marketing ideas are covered heavily in our Marketing book, so download for free. 

The one dimensional IM style live blogging of Twitter has gotten in the way for me.  But, I am starting to become a believer and many other online marketers and business people are definitly seeing similar evidence.  In fact some internet marketing people from Amex and Dell have seen an ROI on their Twitter efforts.  Check the link to the following article just published in Media post, below is an excerpt:

“My personal favorite example comes from American Express, specifically its OPEN Forum. The OPEN Web site combines professional editorial, consumer-generated content and product marketing. To tap Twitter, American Express co-opted the popularity of its guest bloggers like Seth Godin, John Battelle and, in particular, Guy Kawasaki, (who wrote about Twitter on the OPEN Forum site just last week ).

Analyzing the traffic patterns of the OPEN Forum Web site reveals some great data. Every time Kawasaki posts a blog to the site, traffic doubles. Looking at daily traffic patterns since the beginning of the year, nearly every peak in visitation to the site corresponds to a post from Kawasaki. This is significant for a site that is already averaging over two hundred thousand visits each month.

So how is American Express promoting this great content – banner ads? SEM? SEO? None of the above. Instead, the brand relies on Kawasaki’s existing Twitter celebrity, knowing that his tweets reach over 100,000 followers, who will then retweet the post to their followers. All of this activity drives traffic to the OPEN Forum Web site, where American Express can convert them into the right card product. One of the most telling statistics, however, is that Twitter is now the top-ranked traffic source for OPEN Forum – 11.7% of traffic to the site comes from Twitter versus 9.1% from Google and 4.5% from Guy’s personal blog, GuyKawasaki.com. The data show that American Express is cracking the code on getting hard ROI from Twitter.”  See more and visit full article from Mediapost.com

You notice that in the examples the website or communities talk about blogging and the onslaught of traffic after each post.  While Twitter and faceBook are hot ways to generate traffic.  The end result should still be providing great content and a destination for your community to visit and get value on a regular basis.  The more we focus our community to a specific niche of targeted content the better.  Fresh or current content is not only king or sticky as we use to stay in the earlier internet era, it equals community if provided via blogging or social marketing.   People often ask me how often should I blog or update content to my site, I say for blogs it’s optimal to blog 2-3 times a week, and once a week is paramount.  For websites, it’s important to update on a weekly basis, and it’s often made easier by adding summaries of blogs.  So keep blogging and you will always get customers and traffic.  The key is to do it with a smart SEO, Search and Social marketing focus.  For all the basics on everything you need to know and do on SEO, Search and social marketing, especially blogging, download our Marketing Book.

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