Facebook killing other social media networks in referral traffic

Facebook refers four times more traffic to websites than its next closest social media competitor, Pinterest.

Shareaholic’s Social Media Traffic Report for the 3rd Quarter compares the referral traffic from eight major social media networks to websites of all different shapes and sizes, including blogs.

Twitter, which I use the most to share news and commentary from blogs and news sites, is only number three. Wilder yet is that Twitter only refers 20% of what Pinterest does and Facebook refers twenty times the traffic that Twitter refers.

LinkedIn, the social network most used by lawyers and law firms, is in last place, trailing StumbleUpon, Reddit, Google+ and YouTube, in that order. Facebook refers over 1,000 times the traffic as LinkedIn.

What’s this mean for blogging lawyers and law firms?

• Referral traffic from social media and social networks is becoming increasingly more important in drawing readers to your blogs.
• Developing a “social” presence on Facebook is key. Social meaning sharing others content, liking, commenting, and strategically be-friending people, as opposed to broadcasting your own content.
• LinkedIn, though enabling lawyers to publish on its own social network, refers little traffic to blogs and websites.
• Your blogs must be “social-ready.” Content on Facebook is viewed on a browser built into Facebook and most viewers are on mobile. Your posts need to have short titles, be on responsive design, have images set for Facebook specs, and have content that is scannable.

As I have mentioned before, we are moving from a Google search era to a social referral era for law blogs.

Image courtesy if Flickr by Scott Beale