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Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

notes.ghed.in

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Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#11

Post by esrauch »

rpgbr wrote: post #4
moravak1984 wrote: post #3

I'd argue that Mastodon and Telegram hardly count as social media (and 450 contacts on WhatsApp... come on) If someone with a site on X/WhatsApp/Instagram/FB repeats the experiment, then we might see something interesting.

OP here. I dropped an X/Twittter account in the end of 2022 with ~17k followers and… really, nothing changed. Since then, it’s safe to assume that things worsened there and everywhere. Google is the only traffic referrer that still matters. See: https://sparktoro.com/blog/who-sends-traffic-on-the-web-and-...

If you have 17k followers how many actual eyeballs see your posts? I guess it largely depends on how "stale" the account followers are (= how many are still active), but I have to guess it's below 1k? Maybe even below 100?

Then the math for conversion rate on link clicks after that, it seems like you might be talking about on the order of ten hits for 17k followers?

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#12

Post by sph »

Of course not. Social media is shouting at the void at best, but usual self-contained rage bait. People open Twitter/Mastodon to doomscroll and post their thoughts, and could not care less about linked content. I have seen the same exact pattern with trying to mention my latest blog posts on Mastodon or other social media: no one cares.

I had much more engagement posting on Linkedin, though one would believe that with all the spam there no one would have time to check out your post. You'd be very wrong. Though the downside of this strategy is having to use Linkedin.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#13

Post by ghaff »

rpgbr wrote: post #4
moravak1984 wrote: post #3

I'd argue that Mastodon and Telegram hardly count as social media (and 450 contacts on WhatsApp... come on) If someone with a site on X/WhatsApp/Instagram/FB repeats the experiment, then we might see something interesting.

OP here. I dropped an X/Twittter account in the end of 2022 with ~17k followers and… really, nothing changed. Since then, it’s safe to assume that things worsened there and everywhere. Google is the only traffic referrer that still matters. See: https://sparktoro.com/blog/who-sends-traffic-on-the-web-and-...

LinkedIn still matters quite a bit for commercial/professional stuff.

X still matters some. But anecdotally, X is far less relevant and used in my circles post-Musk. (And Mastodon hasn't replaced it for most people.) I think Musk was the impetus for a lot of people to dial down their social media use.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#14

Post by fuzzy_biscuit »

blueboo wrote: post #7

Depends on your goals. People are beginning to shop primarily on TikTok and Instagram. Social media seems to be enshittify-evolving to be the new e-commerce. Meanwhile, summarising posts in video on Shorts/Reels/TikTok might be quite a traffic bump. I’m seeing big numbers from channels that typically offer thoughtful, long-form content

I have no basis to agree or disagree, but the social engines involved are incentivized to do so: they can cash out the data they are constantly farming.

It's scary to me to get shopping recommendations from platforms that have no interest in making anything better at all. It's scarier to me that the generational gap has widened enough where that seems reasonable. I guess the recos are just that good?

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#16

Post by weinzierl »

I find it interesting, that social media and messaging apps are kind of thrown into one pot increasingly.

My mental model has always been like:

- Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon

- Slack, Discord, Zulip, IRC

- WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Matrix

- Zoom, Teams, Jitsi

With mass communication to individual communication from top to bottom (and increasing freedom roughly from left to right).

It seems these distinctions get blurred more and more and we will probably end up with different apps differing only in a single dimension from left to right.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#17

Post by AlexandrB »

burrish wrote: post #10

Here something funny about X/Twitter, if you dare post a link in your main tweet, this will significantly decrease the reach of this one. (you have to post it in the comments) Because X/Twitter want people to stay in their platform, link outside X isn't great for them.

This is one of those post-acquisition changes that made Twitter a lot less useful. I don't really get the logic, Twitter is optimized for a certain kind of content - short text - and anything longer needs to go on another platform. Instead of embracing that the current ownership wants to compete with TikTok and Youtube and Instagram and substack at the same time.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#18

Post by slimsag »

ghaff wrote: post #13
rpgbr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. I dropped an X/Twittter account in the end of 2022 with ~17k followers and… really, nothing changed. Since then, it’s safe to assume that things worsened there and everywhere. Google is the only traffic referrer that still matters. See: https://sparktoro.com/blog/who-sends-traffic-on-the-web-and-...

LinkedIn still matters quite a bit for commercial/professional stuff. X still matters some. But anecdotally, X is far less relevant and used in my circles post-Musk. (And Mastodon hasn't replaced it for most people.) I think Musk was the impetus for a lot of people to dial down their social media use.

Anecdotally, a majority of people I used to see on Twitter I now see only in Discord.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#19

Post by criddell »

sph wrote: post #12

Of course not. Social media is shouting at the void at best, but usual self-contained rage bait. People open Twitter/Mastodon to doomscroll and post their thoughts, and could not care less about linked content. I have seen the same exact pattern with trying to mention my latest blog posts on Mastodon or other social media: no one cares. I had much more engagement posting on Linkedin, though one would believe that wit…

> Social media is shouting at the void at best

At best, social media is an additional way of keeping in touch with people you know and care about.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#20

Post by Veuxdo »

AlexandrB wrote: post #17
burrish wrote: post #10

Here something funny about X/Twitter, if you dare post a link in your main tweet, this will significantly decrease the reach of this one. (you have to post it in the comments) Because X/Twitter want people to stay in their platform, link outside X isn't great for them.

This is one of those post-acquisition changes that made Twitter a lot less useful. I don't really get the logic, Twitter is optimized for a certain kind of content - short text - and anything longer needs to go on another platform. Instead of embracing that the current ownership wants to compete with TikTok and Youtube and Instagram and substack at the same time.

Twitter: "But why do you need anything longer, human...?"
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