Updated on December 10, 2021
It’s been about a year since I last wrote a dedicated post about my social network usage. Thus, I thought it was time for another update.
While Facebook’s the most prominent social network, it’s not been such a great option in my case.
As I wrote a few months ago, I’ve shuttered my blog’s Facebook page. It didn’t offer me any traffic; there’s been little interaction with it; and Facebook’s algorithms only serve to discourage anyone without either a pre-existing large following or tons of cash to spend on “boosting” a post’s visibility.
Of course, all that is on top of Facebook’s multiple other problems.
Twitter remains pretty cemented as my most heavily used social network. It helps that it’s the one I enjoy using the most.
That said, Twitter’s also seen its own share of problems, mostly related to how it’s handling its troll and hate speech problems.
Google+
As I wrote last September, I decided to close down my Google+ profile. It turns out I did it just in time, as Google announced a month later it’s shuttering Google+ as of April 2019.
I still have an Instagram profile. However, my usage of it’s dropped off, mostly due to infrequent photo taking. Facebook being, well, Facebook also hasn’t done much for my enthusiasm.
I’ve also decided to pare back a bit on the social networks I use, namely Pinterest. I didn’t use it much beyond posting new blog posts to it, and I get minimal traffic from Pinterest anyway. It’s also less work to just stick with posting to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.I used Pinterest some time ago, but shuttered my use of the social network in late 2017, mainly to cut down on my number of social networks. As I wrote at the time:
Given the outcome of that social network strategy, I had room to give Pinterest another go. Despite not using it, I kept getting a low amount of traffic from Pinterest. Since re-starting up my page, there’s been a slight traffic boost.
I still have my LinkedIn profile, and make occasional use of it for job-hunting, especially lately, since I’m looking for a new job. However, LinkedIn doesn’t drive any traffic to my blog, despite previous efforts, so its icon’s been dropped from the sidebar.
Statistics
Social network traffic admittedly isn’t the biggest portion of the blog’s traffic; that’d be search engine searches (i.e. Google). Still, here’s a percentage breakdown by social network for traffic over the past year (March 14, 2018 to March 14, 2019):
- Twitter: 37.4%
- Facebook: 26.3%
- Google+: 26.2%
- Pinterest: 3.8%
- LinkedIn: 2.9%
- Reddit: 2.8%
- Other: 0.6%
A more relevant breakdown (reflecting the various changes listed in this post over the past year) might be to just look at the past three months’ worth of data. December 14, 2018 to March 14, 2018 gives us:
- Twitter: 45.2%
- Facebook: 32.4%
- Pinterest: 10.6%
- Reddit: 10.6%
- Other: 1.2%
Unsurprisingly, Twitter and Facebook are the dominant sources of social network traffic, though all the networks seemed to make up for dropping Google+. Pinterest’s seen a boost as well since I reopened my page. The Reddit entry’s a short-term spike from one post—not a steady source of traffic. It’s also a social network I’ve long abandoned, with little desire to go back.
Conclusion
The social networks I use the most for the blog include Twitter and Pinterest, which are both linked to in the sidebar. The current post sharing buttons include Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Of course, RSS and email also are important parts of any website. You can follow the blog through your RSS reader or subscribe by email to receive new blog posts.
Photo by PhotoMIX-Company (Pixabay / CC0 / cropped from original)
