Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days

Even with Twitter’s immense popularity and quickly growing user base, there are still quite a few naysayers and skeptics of the social networking site. For example, I still hear that “it’s a waste of time with nothing but useless chatter.” Blah blah blah. Sure Twitter can be a big time sink with little income and traffic potential, but that’s only if you let it be or you don’t know how to utilize it efficiently.

Today, I’m going to show you a case study from my own personal experiences of how I leveraged Twitter to send boatloads of viral traffic to my site – 35,967 pageviews in 2 weeks to be exact. I’ll include real evidence straight from my analytics that clearly displays the undeniable truth. That ought to silence the critics.

Twitter is a serious social media tool that should be on the same level as giants like Digg, Delicious, and Reddit (if not higher). If you’re not using it as a part of your social campaigns, you’re missing out on a ton of traffic.

Now here’s what I did…

Content development strategy – what to write about?

When news broke out that Twitter implemented a search feature, there was much controversy on the role it would play in the search industry. Would Twitter be a Google killer? A supplement? A fad? There was heated debate on both sides of the argument and that’s when I knew I had a great post idea on my hands. The news was still fresh so I was able to capitalize on the controversy and add fuel to the fire. My article was born: 6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search – Google Beware. What better way to go viral on Twitter than to stir up controversy about Twitter itself?

Seeding the articles, getting initial exposure

Ok, so I had my Twitter piece ready to go and I knew it had the potential to do well on the social networks. The problem was that I couldn’t just let it sit and expect people to pick it up and share it. I had to be proactive and tell them about it. So what did I do? I talked to a bunch of friends online and asked them to share it on Twitter (via re-tweet) and promoted it on social networks like Digg, Reddit, and Sphinn. Ah, more eyeballs… on the right track.

A crucial step that paid huge dividends for me in this effort was the implementation of the Tweet This WordPress plugin. Basically what it does is automatically append a re-tweet Twitter link at the end of all posts (complete with a shortened URL). The results were very surprising and readers used the link a lot more than I thought they would. I recommend everyone install the plugin and test it out. You can see an example at the end of this post (completely automated).

Mild success and followup

After my initial promotion, the article saw pretty good success. It reached hot status on Sphinn and received a good amount of traffic in just a couple days through sharing on social networking sites. I decided to write a followup article, Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search, which saw even better results and traffic using the same strategy.

After a week, both of my Twitter articles slowed down quite a bit in terms of traffic and re-tweets. I thought that that was the end of the run, and to be honest with you I would have been perfectly fine with the results. I definitely didn’t expect what was to come…

Viral traffic explosion

Now for the fun part – which will show you the explosive nature of Twitter. About 10 days after publishing my 6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search post, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (335,604 followers) tweeted out the link and that opened up the floodgates. Pete Cashmore of Mashable (368,239 followers) did the same and the link was then re-tweeted over 700 times more by people who found the article interesting.

The article was featured on the front page of Twitturly as one of the most re-tweeted links and was placed on the popular pages of both Delicious and popurls. Not only that but the success on Twitter led to the link also being shared on many other social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, and more.

That day the article received 9,946 pageviews and 6,179 the next. In fact, all of the simultaneous database requests crashed my server several times during the spike (teaches me to leave my cache plugin activated). What a rush. The awesome thing about it is that I’m still seeing re-tweets of the article to this day, more than 3 weeks later. Like Twitter now?

Results revealed

Below are some screen shots of the stats from March 12-25.

6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search – Google Beware – 24,725 total pageviews

Trending graph



Top 10 sources

Keep in mind that (direct) includes URL shortening services and 3rd party Twitter applications (e.g. Twhirl, TweetDeck, etc)



Followup article: Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search – 11,242 total pageviews

Trending graph



Top 10 sources

Keep in mind that (direct) includes URL shortening services and 3rd party Twitter applications (e.g. Twhirl, TweetDeck, etc)



Important Lessons Learned

I need you to understand that I’m not sharing these results to brag or anything like that. In fact, these stats are miniscule compared to the enormous viral campaigns some of the best social media gurus have pulled off. Rather, I hope that through this small case study you’re able to better use Twitter as another social media channel to send viral traffic to your sites. Learn anything new? I know I have. Here are some of my key findings I discovered through this experience.

Get the right people to notice you. Power tweeps with hundreds of thousands of followers will send you a ton of traffic. Remember that 20% of re-tweets send 80% of the traffic (probably closer to 10-90 in this case). Re-tweets are extremely important on Twitter and could lead to a gigantic snowball effect. Be sure to install the Tweet This WordPress plugin to make it easy for your readers to re-tweet your links. Use Twitter to jump start sharing on other social media sites. As I discovered in this case study, popularity on Twitter easily translates to viral sharing on other sites like Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. Never give up on your social marketing campaigns. If you truly believe you have a great idea that’s worth sharing, keep going at it. My Twitter article only reached mild success before finally taking off 10 days later. Sometimes all you need is another day or another person to help for your story to catch fire.

What do you think? Will you be using Twitter to launch your viral social marketing campaigns? Leave a comment with your own Twitter stories and take part in the poll below.

My friend Derek Halpern over at Prevential has a similar Twitter success story and explains how you can go viral on Twitter. Check it out.

Do you use Twitter to drive social traffic back to your sites? Yes, I've had a lot of great success with it

Yes, but I've only received small amounts of traffic from it

No, I understand the benefits but just don't have the time

No, Twitter is useless View Results