How To use Facebook to Increase the Blog Traffic

Facebook and other social media like Twitter appear to be increasing their influence upon the blogosphere, according to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2010 report, released today.

Bloggers’ most common source for post topics is conversations with friends, although they say that other blogs they read are the most influential. As far as what they’re reading, social media sites have gained more of the blogosphere’s attention span over the past year.  Technorati says:

Bloggers spent an average of 9.9 hours on social media sites each week, compared to just 5.5 hours among the American general population. It is also interesting to note that bloggers were spending more time on social media sites each week than they were reading other blogs.

Even more telling, the bloggers surveyed by Technorati say they are more likely to recommend a brand, product or services from information gleaned from a friend on Facebook than something read on a blog!

I can’t help but see a twinkle of irony in the fact that these findings come from none other than Technorati, the name most closely associated with the practice of ranking blogs. Search engine optimization theorists have said that Technorati’s traffic-sending powers have diminished ever so slightly over the past year, and today’s report would seem to corroborate that. I mean no offense to Technorati, but rather am generally lamenting how quickly things can go from being hot to not.

Facebook and other social media continue to become stronger SEO forces than links from blogs. Of course, the art of building traffic online seems to change as rapidly as technology continues to improve along with new theories for reverse engineering these innovations. That begs a question I’ve seen posed by other scribes and pundits: What if the next big thing to come out — perhaps something not yet invented — usurps Facebook and Twitter? Only time will tell, I suppose.