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.

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