Humane Society Has Friends
I promised myself that I was going to cut back on posting on social media. Believe me, I’m trying.
But yesterday I said that, if I were a fundraiser at a nonprofit, I’d bump social media higher on my priority list if/when I saw social media sites driving more traffic to my website than search engines did.
I asked if anyone had some data on this. And sure enough, here’s a comment from Carie Lewis at the Humane Society of the US:
"Tom – here at the Humane Society of the United States, Facebook and Twitter have been in our top 5 referring sites for over 6 months now. Share buttons on our web content, emails, and social networking efforts has really paid off."
OK … "in our top 5 referring sites" got my attention. That’s impressive.
But — and I don’t mean to split hairs here — that statement notwithstanding, search engines could still be driving 90% or more of HSUS’ referred web traffic.
Tell us more Carie.
Tom
P.S. I can’t resist … How many of those visits are from pets?
3 responses to “Humane Society Has Friends”
Behavioral Science Q & A
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I think it’s important to consider that keyword related social media commentary about a web site will increase it’s ranking in google or other engines. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Tom, you are certainly correct – Google is at the top if we’re talking all traffic sources.
But, Facebook is our #1 referring site, by a long shot. Currently, it more than doubles the #2 referring site, which is actually another social site: stumbleupon. Before we had a solid social media strategy, neither of the sites would come up on our analytics radar.
If we want to talk overall percentages… last month, search engines accounted for 58% of our traffic, and referring sites 26%. So, search engine traffic is certainly significant, but its not quite the divide that you might imagine.
And you got me on the pets thing…. my dog is sitting next to me here and is hard at work!
Carie-
What percentage of your web traffic is referred by facebook, stumbleupon or twitter?