Struggling to generate organic traffic through Social Media - Read this!
Social Networks are the darlings of today’s internet generation and people are spending increasingly more time on different social networks. To get a clear idea, let’s look at this data from Similarweb.
Above data from Similarweb clearly shows that four out of the top 5 websites in the world are Social Networks viz. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These social networks are hogging consumer interest as well as time. But they don’t stop there - these social networks drive a lot of traffic to other websites (both paid and organic). Holy grail of social media marketing is to drive tons of free traffic from social media.
How Social Media Networks grow
All social networks exist due to their users and creators sharing awesome content with their followers. The strength of any social network lies in the quality of content shared by its users so whenever a new social network comes into existence; its sole focus is on incentivising the users to create the best content. The users/creators start creating and sharing content on the network due to two reasons - Either they are attracting more followers (to monetise later) or they are able to already make money out of their efforts.
For them to make any money, they need to send traffic from the social media site/app to a third party website which is monetising the incoming traffic either through ads or through affiliate relationships with third party retailers. In either case, the creators tend to push links to their followers on the social network and drive them out. Now, the social network does not mind this as this incentivises the creators to spend more time in creating kickass content for the network. However, slowly and surely the organic reach of the creators gets stifled.
To give you an example - Facebook in 2014-15 was giving an average reach of 1-2 Lakh to any post for a Page with 3 Million Followers meaning that ~5% of the followers were seeing the posts from a page. Assuming a 10% CTR - Almost 10-20K clicks were sent out per post by such a page to their website from Facebook amounting to anywhere between 30-60 USD of revenue (CPM of 1$ and 3 Ads per page view). However, in 2020 - the same page would be able to drive not more than 1000 clicks even for the most viral stories. SO anyone who worked on Facebook in 2016 and before would have made tonnes of money - Same is the case with other social networks.
Timing is the Key!
The holy grail of generating organic traffic through Social media sites is three fold -
Predicting the next big social media site before it breaks through the clutter
Understanding the audience and creating kickass content for them to generate fan base
Monetising the audience before the social network starts reducing the organic reach
This looks easier than it is. The window of generating the fan base and monetising is not more than 2-5 years. So, don’t keep wasting time on the social network of the past. Go out there and identify the next rocket ship and onboard it before others!!