I’d concentrated on organic for years and have only recently decided dip my toe in the social pool and the results recently have been worthwhile – especially with SU.

Interesting that you said you got 100 views for the first post, 200 for the second, 400, 800, 1500, and then down to 1! I have seen similar volatility. I had a post get 6,000+ from SU but the others get 100+ and I’ve no idea why. Maybe an eye-catching title?

And, maybe the traffic isn’t quality. But some traffic is better than no traffic at all and I do get a hike in subscriptions when I get a spike in traffic so it’s all good.

And to answer Suzanne, I find LinkedIn a great place to get advice. Join as many groups as you can in your niche and then you can post to 50+ groups at a time and that gives you excellent targeted traffic. And LinkedIn people tend to leave comments and subscribe!

But with so many social sites out there, everyone’s going to have their favorites and different experiences!
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Haven’t tried linked in myself, thought browsing other design blogs it seems to be all the rage.

I don’t think I’ve heard of Ning, I’ll have to check it out.

I wonder what other sites your readers are finding helpful. Anyone getting traction from Ning or LinkedIn?

Thanks for the post!
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Each blog I post I bookmark to Stumbleupon, only once on one account, no spamming etc. For the first 3 months or so I received literally no traffic from it, each post claiming 1 page view only.

For some reason after the 3 month mark, my blogs bookmarked after that point now have ascending views in order of submission.

Something along the lines of 100 views for the first post that began yielding traffic, 200 for the second, 400, 800, 1500, etc. as the post go on.

Each new post is met with proportionally higher traffic until a week or so ago all new posts are again stuck on 1 view only.

I’m still bookmarking posts only once, on one account, just as I did the last 150 times, but now it appears I’m on some variety of blacklist so who knows.

Your point regarding the targeted traffic however is excellent. Part of my contact form is a “how did you find me field” and I can’t think of an answer that wasn’t either Google, or Twitter. Never Stumbleupon.

It seems a shame to randomly lose the traffic like I have at this stage, but as you mentioned, due to the nature of Stumbleupon perhaps I haven’t lost much?

I agree that social media takes more time and I do work on it but it just hasn’t given me the results. I’ve seen the odd burst of traffic from a Stumble but I’m not sure if the traffic is sticky and I think that the targeted traffic from Google is far more likely to stay and, even better, contact me for work. Interesting post.
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I can see why people don’t use social sites, there’s no doubt that making the most of it requires regular work, long term though I think you can’t go wrong.

I also still see articles from months and months ago that are getting referrals from said sites which I’m sure would get a lot less traffic (possibly none at all) if it weren’t for my OnlyWire submissions
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