Study Says Social Media Sucks at Driving Traffic

Quite simply, when it comes to driving traffic to your website, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook kind of suck at it, at least according to a study done by a company called Outbrain.
Once the study, as pointed out by Mashable, is taken into account, even the Drudge Report, a much smaller operation by comparison, out does Twitter and Facebook combined. It should be noted that the king of traffic referrals is, of course, Google. So much so, in fact, they are lapping the rest of the field.
Comfortably.
If the study’s validity is intact, the main lesson from Outbrain’s findings is social media sites do not drive traffic like content sites and search engines do, and it’s not even close. That means that, while all those retweets are nice to see, apparently, few people are clicking the actual link embedded within the tweeted message. The study also sheds doubt on just how effective social media marketing campaigns are. Sure, things are good if it’s part of a current trend, but if not, no traffic for you, apparently.
The same, according to the study, is true for all those Facebook shares, as well. People evidently only react to the subject line, and not the content contained within, or that’s being promoted. A look at the chart of Outbrain’s study shows these surprising numbers quite clearly:
Mashable’s article has quotes from Outbrain concerning their findings:

“Twitter is fundamentally a broadcast medium, where people are … following [other] people in order to get the content they put out. You want to receive links to content, and you’re likely to click on them,” [ COO David ] Sasson said.
“Facebook, on the other hand, is [more for] hearing what your friends are doing, sharing a dialogue or personal photos with them — not finding content. That happens, certainly, but as a secondary effect, not a primary one. So it could be that while Facebook has a much bigger audience, the people there are not as interested in using Facebook to find content as the people who use Twitter expressly for that purpose,” he said.

Judging by the 1.7 percent traffic rate for Twitter, I’m not sure people are clicking the links like Sasson suggests. It does make sense that Google is a clear leader in such a category. When people search, they usually click a result, which takes them to a webpage/site, ergo, traffic driving has occurred. Same with aggregate sites like Drude Report and Reddit, although, Reddit’s score is a low 1.10%, which, will still higher than Facebook’s score, it does bring the study’s validity into question.
Ask Imgur.com how many traffic referrals they get from Reddit.
With all of that in mind, does the study make you doubt the effectiveness of a social media marketing campaign, especially if people aren’t clicking the links, even for stuff they apparently like? Let us know what you think.
About Chris Richardson
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

source:http://www.webpronews.com/study-says-social-media-sucks-at-driving-traffic-2011-08