Kimberlee of I Have A Degree In This! recently shared a report from Media Bistro breaking down Twitter users by demographics. The study, conducted by Pew Research Center, looks at the landscape of social media and Internet use in America. What I found most interesting from the study were the statistics of social media usage overall. I started thinking about HOW people use the internet and how that impacts us, as bloggers, in our ability to find new readers and engage with them.
I’ve long argued that bloggers are not our only readers, and the majority (90%!) of our readers are silent — they don’t engage with us at all! As you can see below, based on the number of people who are using the Internet, the stats on social media use are lower than I expected (with the exception being Facebook).
Based on these numbers, do we need to be re-thinking HOW to reach our desired audiences and how to develop interactions with them?
As Hilary shares in Social Media Made Simple: How & Where to Spend Your Time, it’s worthwhile to invest our time carefully and “do more with less.” It isn’t worth our effort to devote excessive amounts of time to social media sites to only connect with the same people over and over; it isn’t worth our effort to share the same information, in the same way, with the same people over and over.
Where to Find Your Readers:
When they AREN’T on social media!
- While bloggers aren’t our only audience, they are a GREAT audience to have. I truly believe our relationships with other bloggers are instrumental in growing our blogs and being active participants in the blogging community. A recommendation and incoming link from a fellow blogger is worth its weight in gold– and YOUR recommendation is worth it for another blogger. I’ve found developing relationships with bloggers is based on regular interaction via commenting, Twitter, and emails.
- Pay attention to your analytics: where are people going? Where are people coming from? Despite what the above chart says, use that as your best gauge of where to devote your time (and what percentage to devote!). There’s no point is spending 3 hours a day on Pinterest if it’s only returning 5 or so clicks to your site; only 15% of your target audience is using that site anyhow. Maybe you receive 30% of your traffic from Twitter though! If so, find out what’s working and push it to see if you can’t bump it from 30% to 35%.
- SEO. We all praise, SEO, I know. On a daily basis, I receive approximately 50% of my traffic from search engines. A big portion of this comes from using the alt image tag in photos and titling them something searchable. (Thanks, Chris Hemsworth topless for the traffic!) On the less silly side, I’ve received many comments over the years from women searching for tips on being in a long distance relationship; a compelling post with great content will naturally pick up SEO, even if you’re not an SEO pro yet.
- Advertise in the right spots. If you reach a point where you want to invest financially in growing your site, advertise where your readers are. Using the above stats, I’d be better off utilizing Facebook ads and optimizing my Fan Page to reach women in my target demographic than trying to find new traffic through Instagram.
- Promote your site OFFLINE. It’s crazy, I know. I’ve had tons of friends who’ve taken advantage of free business card and postcard offers to whip up some cards for their site and have distributed them IN REAL LIFE. They’ve left them in book stores, clothing shops, and their local coffee houses. They hand out their card to a person they may meet at a party. And it works.
Were you as surprised by the social media statistics as I was? (What’s going on Tumblr–only 6%?!)
Does seeing those numbers impact how you want utilize your social media time for promoting your site?
What alternative ideas do you have for reaching out to the remaining internet participants who AREN’T on social media?
{Ed Note: I like to sing the title of this post to the tune of Paula Cole’s Where Have All the Cowboys Gone. You’re welcome.}
This post is spot on, Ashe. Bloggers are often told you’ve got to be on every new platform and reach all of the people, but in truth, it’s more important to understand where your target audience is (e.g., if you’re not writing to young women Tumblr probably doesn’t make sense) and where your current audience likes to consume your content (e.g., referral traffic). Analytics can tell you just that.
But just as, if not more, important are those face-to-face interactions you talk about as well. Since I’ve been getting more active in my local fashion community, I’ve seen an overall lift in traffic. They aren’t clicking from any place, they’re coming to my site directly! And, don’t forget that just because people aren’t at fashion events doesn’t mean they don’t want to read your content. If you can get over the awkwardness of saying, “Yes, I put photos of myself on the Internet a few times a week,” a lot of your friends and acquaintances are interested in reading your content as well!