I am going to share some of my experiences with you on social media marketing to tell you what is the best social media website for your website and why.You may have noticed over the past 2 weeks that I have geared a couple of my posts a little more towards the social media.





First off, lets just name the main social media websites out there:



Digg
StumbleUpon
Del.icio.us
Reddit



Other Niche Social Media Websites (ie. DesignFloat is a Digg like site for design) So what is the best social media website for your website and why? To determine the ‘best’ social media website for you it depends on what your after. The usual main reasons for targeting social media websites are for:



Traffic
Subscribers
Regular Readers
Links / Exposure
Money



I am going to look at these 5 reasons and will be doing so by comparing stats from Google Analytics and my own experiences. Check out the stats for the three pages mentioned above.





Digg



Traffic



As you can see, by getting onto Digg’s front page, it will literally bring thousands of visitors usually within a few hours, but how good is the traffic?The average Digg visitor only stayed on Just Creative Design for 1:12 and only 17% of 43, 000 stayed on my website to check out more of my articles. The real value of this traffic is usually not that great as the huge amount of traffic usually brings down most sites (JCD went down for about 1 hour when we were getting 2000 requests per second) however it does boost your Alexia rank, get exposure, and build links.43,654 Visitors is not something you can really get anywhere else apart from Digg so if it is visitors and traffic your after, go for Digg.



Subscribers



You would think after 43,000+ visitors to your site you would get at least some subscribers but after my experience only about 1% of all the visitors subscribed to JCD, 430 subscribers from 43,000? But I can’t be sure that they all came from Digg. About 100 had unsubscribed by the next day.



Regular Readers



This is something I have not been able to track, but usually if you want regular readers I would target smaller social media sites in your niche as they are more interested in what you have to write about. An example is DesignFloat, which is a Digg like site for designers.



Links / Exposure



This is something you can’t control but Digg sure does bring exposure to your blog, links were scarce but you do pop up on other social media sites such as popurls and jimmyr which also bring a good amount of traffic.



Money



Not worth having PPC (Pay Per Click) ads on your site with Digg, after 60000 page views, only 4 people had clicked on my Google Adsense ads. Digg users generally do not click on ads and they have ad blockers installed. If you have a CPM (Cost Per Mile Impressions) ad system installed this would be more beneficial. Affiliate marketing on Digg is a bit questionable, but generally not successful.



Other things worth mentioning:



Digg does bring a mad amount of comments both on your site and on the digg site, for example my recent article 30 Fonts that all designers must own brought over 350 comments to Digg and 50 here on Just Creative Design. Be aware that comments are not always nice but just ignore these!



StumbleUpon



Traffic



The traffic from SU is steady, and in general pretty good in turnover for regular readers. Although it does not bring in huge amounts of visitors all at once like Digg nor in as huge numbers. SU users stayed on Just Creative Design for longer in general and visited at least 2 pages before leaving. You will also notice that it had a very low bounce rate compared to other sites, with 58% of visitors staying on the site!SU users are generally more inclined to stay on your website plus the visitors are steady and usually new (94% new).



Subscribers



Also hard to track, but generally it has a bit better turnover of subscriber numbers after a good stumble post. I would say about 4% subscribe.



Regular Readers



A little better than Digg however not as good as targeting niche social media site as I said before.



Links / Exposure



Exposure is good, and usually you get links back to people that do posts on ‘the best of so and so’ or link love. If your post is getting stumbled it may be a good idea to submit the article to other niche social media sites.



Money



Usually SU users do not click on ads, so this is a bit tough, try using a CPM (Cost Per Mile) advertising solution, something I am going to try soon.



Del.icio.us



Traffic



Traffic usually comes in short bursts, however they are usually more interested in finding out who the author is and what the site is about and they also stay on the site for longer than Digg and Stumble Upon users. Not as many visitors as Digg or SU however a bit better quality traffic as they explore your site more.



Subscribers



Have not been able to track this for Del.icio.us users but if they are interested in your blogs topics and sees your site has value, I imagine a small percentage would subscribe.



Regular Readers



Also hard to track so can’t really comment on this one.



Links / Exposure



Your website is shared amongst all the other users in Del.icio.us which is always great, as you get more exposure and traffic as people bookmark you for future reference.



Money



More likely to click on ads however only a small percentage do so as you can imagine, a lot better than SU or Digg in this respect.



Other things worth mentioning



Generally if your post makes Digg and it is a resourceful post, your post will also make Del.icio.us and other social media sites.



Reddit



Traffic



Not as many visitors as Digg, SU or Delicious but any traffic always helps! Generally they visit just the page that was posted, hardy ever look around your site, and hardly stay on your site at all. Not that valuable traffic, but traffic none the less.



Subscribers



Close to nil.



Regular Readers



Hardly any at all. They usually are interested in the one page that is being linked too.



Links / Exposure



Exposure is good as you will get nearly all new visitors to your blog, however they won’t stick around or write about your post.



Money



A CPM (impressions) ad system would work best here.



Niche Social Media Websites



When I say niche social media websites I mean ones that are targeting at your niche, for example DesignFloat is a digg like site for design related subjects only.



Traffic



Less traffic but a lot more valuable in turn of turnover. Visitors are very targeted so are more inclined to subscribe to your blog and explore your site. Design Float has been great for sending visitors my way and is also a sponsor for this site, but I do notice only about 40% of them are new visitors which means I do get a lot of returning visitors.



Subscribers



As touched on above, users from niche social media sites are more likely to subscribe as they are interested in what your blog is about and won’t want to miss out on what you have to say.



Regular Readers



The best out of any social media site as they are pretty much guaranteed to be interested in your blog.



Links / Exposure



The best also as you will get link backs from other blogs who write on the same topic as you.



Money



This depends on the type of advertising you have, if you have targeted ad words for instance then what you write about will reflect what ads are shown. This means if I wrote about design, design related ads are going to show up, and if people are coming from a niche social media site, they are more inclined to click on the ads as it will reflect their interests.As for affiliate ads, it depends on what your trying to sell. CPM would also work but I am in no way a monetizing expert, as I am not in this for the money.



Conclusion:



If you want lots of visitors and traffic, lots of comments, and thousands of visitors (and maybe your site brought down) and a big batch of subscribers go with Digg.



If you want good steady traffic go with Stumble Upon. You will also get a small number of subscribers and they will explore your site at least on average 2 pages.



If you want short bursts of traffics and a bit of site exploration and link ups go with Delicious.
Reddit users come and go, so this is pretty much only good for page view numbers.



Niche social sites are the best way to go if you’re after subscribers and targeted traffic.
What are your experiences with social media? What works best for you?