Social Site Referrals Mean Loyal Visitors

Looking for higher returning site traffic and brand loyalty? Work on your social networking strategy. According to recent research by ad network Chitika and reported by eMarketer, social sites tend to be far more effective at driving returning traffic to your site than search engines – so brands looking for loyal followers, take heed! Snag ‘em in your social network and you’ll keep ‘em coming back for more.

As marketers we spend loads of time working out the most effective means of optimizing content for higher rankings on the almighty search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo. But, turns out, social content is what breeds loyalty among clickers. Facebook, of course, leads the pack when it comes to social site referrals. According to the study, “more than one-fifth of users referred to a site by Facebook visited at least four times in the course of a week. Less than 12% of Google-referred visitors were as loyal.”

Social sites are connection driven. Many site referrals and product conversions are made based on the recommendations of friends or trusted colleagues. So, such sites are driving traffic that is more likely to return to your website again and again.

Search engines, on the other hand, are more anonymous. Searchers find results based on relevance – not recommendation – so they may not feel as driven to become a customer.

Of course – search engines still rule the universe. Social sites account for only .55% of total traffic referrals, while search engines (all together) totaled almost 98% of all referrals. All hail Google.

But socials are creeping up on the radar. We have clients for   whom their Facebook fan page is one of top 5 traffic referrals monthly, and those numbers add up quick. In addition, they tend to breed higher time spent on site. Social, done right, can mean loads of loyal customers who’ll keep coming back to you. What more could any brand ask for?

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