Figuring Out Different Channels for Organic Traffic

Life as a Digital Marketer is one filled with metrics, abbreviations, numbers, channels, and a million other weird things. From exciting new revelations to boring old adages that you never know if they work or not. But eventually, through all the murkiness, you find that star channel that seems to be a hidden gem, the thing that will get you more traffic and eventually more sales. So after a long time at the wheel, I decided I wanted to share some of my favorite channels, some of which might come as a surprise, they did at least for me.

Facebook Groups 

One of the oldest innovations of Facebook turns out to still be one of the best and highest converting social channels. I have to be honest here, I was a bit skeptical before trying it out. Groups were never something I personally liked and as a result never gave much attention to. Boy, was I wrong! After we created the group "Smokers Let Loose" for our page "TheCheapOnlineStore" we saw instant results. From reviews to actual sales originating from offers that were exclusive to our small club of fans, the results were more than what I even predicted. 

What I loved about groups is the fact that posts on groups tend to behave differently than posts by pages. A page on a group behaves more like a post by personal profile rather than a business page. The distinction here is that posts by profiles tend to reach more traffic organically, simply due to the fact that it is impossible to boost or create an ad for a profile. Just think of this for a second, why does a post on your profile get tons of likes and shares, while a post from your company page barely reaches 10% of your company fans? The answer is a two part simple answer. 

• Economics
• The economics of the matter is that Facebook makes its money from advertising. This means it makes sense that in order to reach your fan base, you as a company must pay for it. Facebook gives you the tools necessary to create very effective and long reaching ads, but they are just that, ads.
• Sociology
• The sociology part of this equation is the fact that Facebook is a social platform. This means that by definition Facebook, must allow users to know what their friends are up to. This is the point of the platform. That is why your friends must be able to see everything you do otherwise it will lose its appeal.

That being said, I do believe that the page vs profile distinction was a stroke of genius. This solution not only guarantees that the network generates revenues, but also that it serves its main purpose. This is why groups are so important. They are where the lines between pages and profiles are blurred and thereby are able to reach a wider audience for a much lower (sometimes zero) cost.

StumbleUpon

This one is easily my new favorite channel for organic traffic. It is very random and doesn't always provide the most targeted traffic. But it does bring in tons of traffic nonetheless. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the platform, here is a quick run through. After signing up to StumbleUpon, you are prompted to select your interests from a range of topics. And that's it. The platform then begins suggesting articles and web pages from all over the internet based on those interests, no matter how varied they may be. If you don't like the current suggestion? No problem. All you do is keep clicking the stumble icon on the top left until you find something you like.

Adding the pages of your website onto StumbleUpon while accurately categorizing and tagging them can lead to what I like to call as "interested traffic". Due to the very nature of "StumbleUpon", traffic from it will have a high bounce rate. But, over time, I have noticed that traffic stays consistent while the bounce rate decreases. I believe this happens because of the way StumbleUpon suggests articles to its users and the way it analyzes them. Eventually, StumbleUpon creates affinity and lookalike audiences that serve better-targeted suggestions. 

Using this platform, I managed to push StumbleUpon to the top of my social media referral lists (even topping Facebook despite me creating ads there). After a while, sales went up, while bounces went down. Better yet, those who came from StumbleUpon stayed on the website longer and browsed more pages than the other social referrals. 

The Next Step in the Search For Organic Traffic? LinkedIn Groups

Now a lot of this rides on the industry and vertical. LinkedIn, after all, is a social network for professionals. But the idea of testing this model is that a while back I have requested access to a couple of groups on LinkedIn and I am still checking in on them every once in a while, unlike their Facebook counterparts. Why? I'm not really sure yet, but I believe the secret lies in the way LinkedIn sends its email notifications on the groups. 

Generally speaking, a LinkedIn email concerning a post on a group you are in, comes with a posted question as the subject line. The question itself is enticing enough for me to at the very least open the email, and at most click through to the group to interact with the poster. Anyways I will be needing to test this theory of mine on the matter. Don't take my word for it just yet, I'll get back to you on the matter soon.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please post them in the comments and I will be more than happy to help!