AP 0969: Should I Get off Twitter If It Doesn’t Result in Traffic?

AskPat 969 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 969 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question coming in today from Jeff. Before we get to that, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks, one of my absolute favorite companies, because they help me and millions of other small businesses manage our business finances. From keeping track of income to expenses, of course, to all the little sheets that you might need during tax season, and they also help with invoicing, too. I've been using them a lot for that. One of the cool features that they have is they can help you understand who has yet to, not just pay you, but who has yet to even open those invoices you sent, which is great for followup. If you want to check them out, I recommend it. Go to FreshBooks.com/askpat and you can try it for thirty days for free. Again, FreshBooks.com/askpat. Make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Sweet. Alright, now here's today's question from Jeff.

Jeff Campbell: Hi Pat, Jeff Campbell here from NewMiddleClassDad.com and thanks again for considering my questions, I know I send you a few. Hopefully you and your listeners find them of value.

My latest question pertains to my social channels and how much traffic they bring me to my website. I find that I spend the most amount of time on Twitter, posting content basically. Twitter actually brings me the least amount of traffic according to my Google Analytics. Facebook and Pinterest bring the most and even at this point, Instagram has surpassed Twitter in terms of bringing traffic to my website. I'm wondering, should I curtail or cut back my activity on Twitter and focus on where I'm getting the most bang for my buck? Or should I consider continuing with Twitter and just hoping that it grows in time eventually and becomes worthwhile?

I appreciate everything that you do, Pat. Thanks again.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Jeff. What up? Pat Flynn here . . . Oh wait. I don't know why I said that, but anyway Jeff, dude, you rock. Thank you for all the questions.

Let me answer your question by first asking you a question. That is, do you feel that social media is specifically and only for getting traffic back to your website? If that's the case, that could be your answer. If that's the reason why you're doing it, then I would totally cut out Twitter and just focus on the—and actually just the top two, really, is what I'll recommend—platforms that you want to focus on that you know are helping.

However—as you can probably tell, I'm sort of setting this up here—social media is not necessarily just for getting traffic. Actually that's not, in my opinion, the primary purpose. Social media is about being social. What does that mean? It means having conversations. It means getting your audience to know that you are there and that you are answering their questions or that you're at least engaging in conversations or at least expressing things that are other than, “Hey, go check out my website.” If everything you are posting on Twitter is a link to something that you have on a website, it's no wonder why Twitter is the thing that's not giving you the most traffic, because there's only 140 characters to work with. On Facebook and on Instagram you likely have more engagement and more traffic there because you are more personable there.

What I would recommend, is if you're going to experiment, try Twitter for the purposes of starting conversations, getting to know people, asking questions, answering questions, hashtag conversations—things like that. In amongst all of that, then every once in a while drop in a link. If you post a link every single time you tweet, nobody's going to want to follow your stuff. And because you're doing that, likely you aren't getting seen very much, which is why it's contributing to you not seeing very much traffic from that particular source, because of the algorithm. That's what I would recommend. If you are doing it specifically just to get traffic, then don't do it. Get off of it or just save it for a rainy day. If you are okay with the idea of posting on social media without actually asking for traffic back to your website, you might find that over time you will get more traffic because of that, because you are using social media in the way that it is meant, especially on places like Twitter where you only have so many characters to share and engage, and if you're not doing that well, nobody's going to see you.

Jeff, that's my answer. Thank you so much for the question, I appreciate it. We'll send you a little gift, the AskPat teeshirt as a result of having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Napoleon Bonaparte, that is, “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” That's it. Being able to decide.

Alright, guys. Take care, thanks so much. I'll see you in the next episode, next week here on AskPat.com. Bye.