Digg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter ….
September 15th, 2009 by Li EvansHope that headline grabbed your attention! Especially if you are planning your entire social media strategy around the marketing tactics of Digg, StumbleUpon or MySpace, you just might want to read on.
When it comes to having Business Value, according to a survey performed by MarketingProfs, utilizing Digg, StumbleUpon and MySpace as social media tactics are pretty much worthless to those marketers who where surveyed. Even marketing tactics around YouTube were found to have little value by the survey. Where did they find extreme value? Twitter and Blogging.
(posted w/ permission from Marketing Profs)
According to the MarketingProfs survey of over 200 Twitter users, Twitter ranks behind only blogs as the social media tool that delivers the most value. On a five-point scale where those Twitter users they surveyed ranked value of the marketing tactics they were using in social media strategies, 41 percent of respondents said Twitter delivers “great value” to their company.
I’m not going to give away the whole report or survey since the report is available for only $49 from Marketing Profs. Honestly, this is a great bargain since it not only gives you the survey information but 10 different Twitter Success Stories.
What I have presented here though should get your mind wondering about your strategies in social media, or those strategies being recommended to you to implement. What are you going to find the most valuable? Is your whole strategy that has been presented to you based around these marketing tactics a lot of other marketers are starting to find no value in?
Of course there also needs to be research done into where your audience is. If you are a company that provides a certain kind of content, you strategy might find extreme business value in implementing a strategy around Stumbleupon. If you are a rock band who needs to get the word out, MySpace may just be the place for you. If you are a “green company” and putting out a lot of content around that, Digg could just be a natural place to seed your content.
However most companies implementing strategies around these types of tactics just might not find a great business value in doing so. It’s all about establishing what will be your “Return”, your “Value” on the investment you put into your social media strategy.
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RT @BethHarte: Digg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter http://cli.gs/AURga (featuring @MarketingProfs survey)
RT @BethHarte: Digg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter from @Storyspinner http://cli.gs/AURga
RT @BethHarte: Digg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter from @Storyspinner http://cli.gs/AURga
RT @EstrellaBella10: IDigg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter @Storyspinner http://cli.gs/AURga (via @BethHarte)
Hey Li,
Thanks for sharing the MarketingProfs research!
One thing to focus on is that the results are from business folks letting us know what’s been effective in their Twitter use…not social media or digital consultants/agencies.
I think more and more we’ll see companies (esp. B2B) using Twitter as their “own voice.” Meaning not ghost tweets from agencies. It’s apparent from the case studies a lot of companies are being creative and focused with their Twitter efforts.
Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs
@bethharte
That makes perfect sense to me. I get more traffic from StumbleUpon (my 4th highest referring site) than I do from Twitter, but SU users have a high bounce rate and don’t spend much time on site. (Which makes sense if people are stumbling and just find themselves on may pages without choosing specifically to go there.)
On my blog, Twitter visitors have a lower bounce rate, are reading multiple pages per visit and spending 16x more time on the site than StumbleUpon users. So they are clearly a more interested audience.
I think the difference is that when people follow a link on Twitter (or Facebook or LinkedIn) they already know what it is about and that it sounds like something of interest. If the link fulfills that promise then they’ll stick around and explore more. If one is Stumbling, or browsing through Digg one may be just killing time rather than looking for solutions. In those cases, links that are more entertaining than informative may be the better performers.
Naturally all of this depends on the type of content one provides and the audience one cultivates on the services. Perhaps if I focused more on StumbleUpon and built up my followers there, I’d have better results. But with the limited time available, I’m going to focus my energies on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, services that already perform well for me.
Interesting – Digg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter from @Storyspinner http://cli.gs/AURga (via @BethHarte)
RT @storyspinner @socialconvos Digg, StumbleUpon & MySpace are Worthless Compared to Twitter | Social Conversations http://cli.gs/jEX1G
Aside from writing about something that polled twitter followers (and concluded that twitter was the best…), I find it really ironic that the share button at the bottom does not let you share to twitter. Just facebook and linkedin