As I pull data for clients this month (and my websites) I have noticed a trend. Over the last 3 months I’ve seen the quality of traffic increase to almost triple the amount.

Many of my clients are starting to use social media and they are beginning to see the payoff. More quality traffic to their websites & blogs.

Here are some numbers from one of my own websites:

LinkedIn traffic has increased by 320%, time spent on site up 224% and bounce rate has gone down 34% over the past three months. Those are amazing numbers!

Facebook traffic has gone up as well, but not as much as LinkedIN.

Many businesses I know have seen great numbers coming from both LinkedIn and Facebook. Is your business seeing the same thing?

First I would like to say sorry for the delay. I had some major issues with our puppy over the past two weeks. She is doing better now.
So, I wanted to talk about something that I was thinking about over the weekend. What would we do without social media? We all know that some of our friends, family, etc. aren’t on Facebook or do not understand Twitter, but for my family it is a great way to keep in touch with family and friends and to keep them updated on our lives, for example the status of our puppy.

I was talking with some friends over the weekend and many don’t even check their email anymore. Most only use Facebook and Twitter to keep in touch with others. I have heard the reports that younger generations don’t use email at all, which really surprises me, but at some point in the future I can see email not being used at all.

For me, I love using Facebook: to keep in touch with friends and because it is part of my business to help others understand how to use social media.

I have proven to myself that I can break away from social media when I need to (vacations, family time, etc.), but it is tough and I don’t know what I would do without Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis.

So my question to you, what would you do without social media?

Everyday we hear about privacy issues with Facebook and most of the time they make changes without warning. Soon Facebook Fan Pages will have 200px less of content space to provide for more ad space. There is also a rumor that they may start charging for Fan pages on a monthly basis.

For me, I have been wondering how much is too much? When will there be something else that comes out. Think back about two years ago when MySpace was leading the way and Facebook was in a far second. Fast forward to present and Facebook has grown and continues to grow on a monthly basis. MySpace is really no where to be found.

Talking to a good friend and business partner, Derek Lee of Visual Alliance Media, we discussed the issues that we’ve been seeing or hearing about with Facebook and we both think that in the next one to two years there will be something coming out that will compete with Facebook. Honestly, I hope so, as in my mind competition is always a good thing.

What do you think? One, do you see a competitor coming out? Two, what’s your thoughts on the Facebook changes?

The numbers are out and it’s official “Facebook tops Google as most-visited site in US“.
So I have to ask, are you surprised or did you see this coming? In all honesty, I am not shocked at all and I am happy to see this. Will this trend continue or do you think Google will take the lead once again?

I have had this discussion with many SEO friends and others about this very topic and I think many of us saw this coming. I’m really excited for what the future will hold.

How often do you update your Facebook fan page? Some fan pages are updated on a daily basis and others on a weekly basis. I would love to hear how often you update your FB fan page.

While I was reviewing a few Facebook fan pages over the weekend, I came across a few great and interactive FB fan pages that I thought I would share with you.

Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Zappos

2. Sears

3. Royal Caribbean

4. Reel Clever

5. Express

Those are just a few of my favorite interactive FB fan pages this week. What are 5 of your favorite Facebook Fan pages?

As you know, most of my job is doing SEO/SEM and website consulting for clients, but lately I have been involved more with social media. I love creating Facebook Fan pages for clients. The biggest thing my partner and I have seen are clients sticking with postings on their pages that are similar to blog postings. I talked about it in the last blog posting (New Year’s Resolutions).

Today I wanted to talk more about a few of the fan pages that have impressed me. Here are 4 that I really like:

1. Best Buy – Great interaction with customers/potential customers and tons of good information on the page.

2. Naughty Monkey – Funny name (at least it made me laugh ). This fan page was suggested by my wife, so I checked it out. It has some interesting information and they seem to be very interactive with their customers.

3. Office Depot – I know, I know office supplies…really exciting, right? Check out their fan page before you say that though. They have great interaction with clients, great pages within their fan page and it is very informative. Great example of a company using Facebook very well!

4. Victoria’s Secret – With over 2 million fans, they really get how to use Facebook fan pages. They have great video postings and also tons of information. They do not have a ton of interaction with customers and postings are here and there, but I like what I see. There is room for improvement, but with 2 million fans there, obviously their fans love the Facebook Fan page.

That is just a few of the fan pages I find very interactive and informative. What are your favorites? Let’s hear them.

I hope you had a great holiday weekend! Last week I ran a poll on LinkedIn to see if my findings were happening to others. I’ve noticed over the course of the past six months that a few of the FB groups I created haven’t been getting much attention and the people who joined them have more or less forgotten about it. I have created many LinkedIn groups and it seems that these groups continue to grow and there are great discussions within them.

I setup a survey last week to see what others where finding. The question, “Do you have better participation with your LinkedIn or FB groups?” I had about 40 to 50 people respond with great feedback. Many of the people that responded (about 90%) said they have more luck with the LinkedIn groups. I think one of the major issues with the FB groups is that they are very hard to find. Many of my FB friends and connects don’t know where to find groups. On LinkedIn, you are able to find the groups much easier. It is too early to report the status of the newly created LinkedIn group because of the holiday weekend, but I’m very happy with the results so far versus the Facebook group that I created a few months ago. I’ll keep you posted on the results.

Here are my questions to you: Have you had the same results with LinkedIn and Facebook? Have you had success with Facebook groups? If so, any suggestions to the other readers out there? It would be great to hear your feedback on this. Like I said, I will also do some follow-up as I get more results from the LinkedIn group.

10. MySpace cut 30% workforce
9. Pens upset Detroit – win the Stanley Cup
8. Lakers win the NBA championship
7. NBA is much more popular then the NHL
6. Coverage of Iran protests
5. Pilot dies in mid-flight. Plane lands safely
4. Teenager wins contest – 500 text messages in 1 day
3. Tweetie vs TweetDeck – Tweetdeck out for the iPhone. Reviews still coming in.
2. Facebook dethrowns MySpace in the US – FB user’s almost doubled since last yr, while MySpace lost almost 5%.
And the #1 Tweeted topic. Anything iPhone – enough said!

As you know, this blog is fairly new, so I’ve been trying a variety of social media tools to promote my new postings. I’ve talked to a few friends and it’s interesting to see what works for them and what may work differently for me. Luckily, with my experience and background in web analytics, I can see almost immediately what’s working when I promote my blog postings on Twitter, LinkedIn and sometimes Facebook.

From my experience and what I’ve seen through Google Analytics tracking, I’ve noticed that when I tweet about my new topic or one of my friends tweets about my posting, I’ll see a jump in traffic of 10 to 20 visitors for that hour. It usually dies off after the initial post, so I would either have to do another tweet or someone else would have to re-tweet my information. Of course that gets a little annoying if I just re-tweet my blog info all the time, so I try and avoid that situation. On LinkedIn, I will usually post something on my status and may post something on one of the groups that I’m in. I usually do this in the morning and then use Twitter later in the day (afternoon) or sometimes the next day.

I was looking at my stats for this past week and it’s interesting to see the comparisons. Besides direct traffic at 43%, traffic from LinkedIn is at 29% and from Twitter it’s at 12% for the week. Right now, my feeling is that I am getting more “quality traffic” from LinkedIN as most of the people I know there are leaving great comments and sending me feedback via email. Most of these friends & connects are then tweeting this information with friends via Twitter which is awesome to see. Hopefully my blog audience will continue to grow. Hint, hint – so tell your friends and co-workers… haha!

What is your experience been promoting your blog or business? Similar experiences or like my friends, totally the opposite? What is working well for you?