On Friday of last week, I finally fully embraced the world of Twitter (better late than never). Given all the press garnered by the social media service in the last couple of weeks – including a full page feature in the FT on Thursday – I thought it was about time I learnt what all the fuss was about. Safe to say, I have been unreasonably addicted all weekend.
In the interests of fully inter-linking my online presence (with no expectation of any tangible consequences), I duly added an RSS link to my Twitter feed to my own blog and, in turn, my Twitter profile links back to my blog landing page.
Imagine my (perhaps naive) surprise when my blog Dashboard this morning displayed an instantaneous leap in traffic figures from Friday onwards – and I hadn’t even posted anything new on Friday. Thus, I can only ascribe this bizarre heightened interest in my random musings to joining the Twitter universe.
Admittedly, when the average views figure for my posts tends to linger around the 30 mark (with a high to-date of 87), this humble ‘leap’ still only draws 125 views a-day. But, while I appreciate that such traffic is unlikely to crash the Wordpress server any time soon, relatively speaking, that is a 4:1 increase in web traffic, solely derived from opening up that additional avenue to my blog through Twitter.
Or at least I assume so. The raised figures were maintained through the weekend, and I can’t imagine that the usual ramblings on Vanity Fair, Gossip Girl and the Olsen twins were that ground-breaking.
All hail Twitter – the latest undeniable force in self-marketing. Just imagine what it could do for brands and sponsors too…
By Lucie Bartlett on March 2nd, 2009
Tags: Blogging, Digital marketing, Social Media
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A piece on New Media Age’s website caught my eye today; the results of a (presumably PR led) survey by O2. Apparently over 6,000 small UK businesses are using Twitter every day to save on marketing costs and to keep in touch with customers. A few interesting stats. The survey found 17% of small businesses are using Twitter with over 25% of them having signed up in the past month. 74% are using Twitter to market and promote their business and 42% are tweeting to stay in touch with customers and suppliers.
Interesting times. The increase in use of devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry phones presumably having played a large role in this trend and the ever changing means of communications. Whether the popularity of Twitter continues to rise exponentially (without me just now), time will tell. I remain an interested observer.