[jklinger410]

> I did some analysis on a pretty large number of domains and found that Twitter had virtually no impact on traffic. There were brands that had a large twitter following, but in nearly every case I could find this was because a popular brand happened to have an audience that also was active on Twitter, not because Twitter activity helped to grow their brand.

How did you perform this research?

[time_to_smile]

Many years ago at a small private company that had access to thousands of Google analytics accounts ranging from recognizable name brands to people just trying to get started. You could actively watch small brands grow big over history and in all cases it was clear that twitter success (in terms of traffic from twitter and follower count) trailed brand development.

This was also not universally true of all social media. Facebook for example did precede growth in quite a few cases.

I also want to repeat the caveat that this was quite awhile back, so I wouldn't give it too much credence for today.

However my Twitter critique also grows out of several cycles of activity and inactivity over many years running a reasonably high traffic (for it's niche) blog and seeing these same observations. Twitter activity only caused minor bumps in traffic, and never correlated with a shift in the baseline readership.

Others here claim different experience, and it's quite possible they are correct. I have found personally that it's very easy to conflate the "feels good" of getting a lot of likes/follower/etc with the illusion that "this is working". Twitter is like a micro HN front page, only at least with HN you'll get a pretty ego inflating spike upon success (which is in practice is bad for marketing because it makes it easy to focus on the things that feel good over the things that work).

For better or worse the best source of consistent increases in traffic was (and from my experience still is) SEO. A high ranking post will have the highest probability of shifting your baseline traffic up.

[affectsk]

Yeah, I wouldn't rely on it as a primary marketing channel in most cases, especially if I had to build it from the ground up.

Conflating "feels good" with "this is working" is right on point, too.

I'm sure it works better as a marketing channel for specific niches, though (just like Instagram works best for certain types of brands).

Other than that, it's just a good place for all kinds of organic engagement in general if that's where your audience is. Not necessarily marketing.