Facebook accounts for almost 25% of social referrals to websites and blogs

If you’re looking for social media to generate traffic to your law blogs and law firm websites, you ought be thinking Facebook.

According the latest report from Shareaholic, Facebook accounted for 23.39 percent of social referrals to websites in the second quarter of 2014. This represents a 10 percent gain since March and an incredible 150 percent gain from a year ago.

Twitter and LinkedIn, social networks often looked to by law firms for social referrals, generated 1.14 percent and .04 percent (last of the social networks measured) of social referrals, respectively.

Facebook was the only one of the eight social networks Shareaholic analyzed to drive a greater share of traffic at the end of the second quarter than it did at the end of the previous quarter. Pinterest and StumbleUpon were the only networks to show gains year over year.

Facebook’s quirkiness, informality, and community appears to be driving the referrals. From David Cohen, publisher of AllFacebook, my source:

A social network is only as good as the connections it fosters and supports. Fortunately, for Facebook, users depend on the ubiquitous social network to communicate individually and wholesale with friends. In fact, 64 percent of Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis, according to Pew Research.

Users are always plugged into their News Feeds and, without realizing, tend to be highly invested in frequent check-ins and lightweight touch points with their connections. Simply put, Facebook is winning the referrals war because users can’t seem to get enough of content shared by close friends and relatable acquaintances.

Facebook’s rich and somewhat unpredictable feed promises anything but monotony. Multi-form media (short posts, long rants, link previews, unformatted links without previews, etc.) offers inconsistency, which makes it impossible to scroll far without at least a handful of posts catching your eye.

What’s it all mean for you guys?

You cannot ignore Facebook. No matter that you don’t mix business and personal. No matter that you don’t like Facebook’s privacy rules. And no matter that you don’t have the time to figure it out.

Facebook will likely prove to be as important to Americans as a cell phone and a newspaper. It’s how we stay connected. It’s how we receive news and information.

Like it or not, Facebook is now a very big deal as far as building relationships and a reputation as a lawyer.