Does Posting Memes on Social Help to Increase Traffic to Your Website? [Study]

Does posting memes assist to extend visitors to your web site?

It is a key query, which actually pertains to all types of participating social media posts – as a result of whereas these kinds of trending updates very clearly garner Likes and feedback, do they really profit the stats that basically matter to your enterprise?

I imply, Likes and followers are nice, however what you want is conversions, relative to what which means for your enterprise. For SMT, we’re working to get as many individuals to learn our posts as doable, and as you’ve doubtless seen, we’ve not too long ago been attempting out memes as a method to increase engagement, and see what that will get us on this respect.

So what have we discovered? Right here’s a fast overview of the preliminary outcomes of our meme experiment.

First, a fast little bit of background…

We’re at all times seeking to attempt new issues, and take a look at out the newest tendencies and processes, and never simply because it would assist us generate extra visitors and construct group, but additionally, as a result of that’s what we write about. If we’re going to jot down about it, we have to know and perceive it as a lot as doable, with the intention to be sure that what we’re speaking is right, and is smart for our viewers.

On this respect, we’re at all times testing new approaches, apps, instruments, and so forth.

By way of posting, final yr, we tried out polls on Twitter and LinkedIn, and query posts on Fb, to see if they’d assist drive extra engagement. They usually undoubtedly did – these kinds of audience-prompting updates garnered a heap of Likes and feedback. However once we cross-checked this towards Google Analytics monitoring, we didn’t see a giant uptick in classes or customers visiting the positioning.

That’s to not say that these aren’t priceless, however they weren’t shifting the needle in any important manner on our key metrics. On the similar time, too many polls can get annoying. In our expertise, they’re an attention-grabbing device to make use of, sparsely, however not a large driver of our final goals.

But, on the similar time, our social visitors, like all platforms, tends to have ups and downs – and in a down interval this yr, we determined to attempt one thing new to clean up the feed and provides our viewers one thing else to have interaction with, and perhaps lighten the temper a little bit on the similar time.

Enter memes

The inspiration on this occasion got here from SEMRush, who’ve additionally examined out memes as a method to spice up engagement, and construct group.

SEMRush’s expertise noticed them considerably improve their social engagement by posting well timed, on-trend, area of interest memes. So we thought we’d give it a attempt, to see if that helps drive extra curiosity in our articles.

Step one, in fact, is creating related, participating memes. Which isn’t at all times simple. Lots of our memes by no means made it out of take a look at part, with some clearly failing when seen within the templates.

Some that we’ve posted additionally haven’t linked in the way in which that we’d hoped.

However that is the sport – in the event you’re going to publish memes, you’re going to have hits and duds, and also you simply should stay with it. I think about it’s the identical as a comic, a few of the jokes work, some don’t. However ideally, extra of them get fun than not.

Which, fortunately, our memes have.

On common, the memes that we’ve posted are producing round 135 Likes on Fb, which has helped them generate considerably extra attain than our common publish, whereas they’re additionally performing robust on each Twitter and LinkedIn.

They usually’re enjoyable. The best way I view them is just like the comedian part of the standard newspaper, a light-hearted second between the information updates and informational components.

The elevated engagement clearly has some advantages in boosting algorithmic attain (if individuals have interaction with certainly one of your posts, the algorithm is extra prone to present them extra), in addition to constructing group across the SMT model. However the important thing query is – ‘do they really get extra individuals clicking by to the positioning?’

Outcomes

In our case, when evaluating our total social media efficiency towards the earlier 3 months earlier than we began posting memes, we’ve seen a 12% improve in classes from social, and a 16% improve in customers.

That’s not a large shift, however whenever you’re working with the ebbs and flows of referral visitors, in addition to adjustments in analytics attributable to shifting knowledge rules, any improve is optimistic, and a double-digit bounce is certainly definitely worth the effort.

That is solely round a month of knowledge, so it’s not definitive, and there are additionally different elements to think about that would affect the outcomes. However the numbers, so far, recommend that it’s price sticking with – and as famous, it’s enjoyable too, including a little bit extra relatability to our presence, as opposed simply the newest information.

A number of different notes:

• Some commenters are going to take your memes actually, regardless of it’s that you simply publish. There’ll at all times be a few feedback like ‘properly, really, the fact is that…’ Sure. We all know. These should not meant to be literal, they’re a second of light-heartedness in amongst our common, advertising strategy-focused information updates.
• We’ve discovered that extra common memes work higher than trending ones. A few memes the place we’ve tried to faucet into information occasions, just like the adjustments to Twitter verification, haven’t carried out in addition to jokes about extra widespread social media advertising experiences. This additionally, in fact, pertains to the memes themselves, and whether or not they’re really humorous, however in a number of examples, trending subjects haven’t been as massive a success.
• Each meme is a little bit of a danger. You’re looking for commonalities along with your viewers, and a few issues that you simply would possibly assume are widespread won’t resonate. It’s essential know your area of interest, and know your group, which takes some experimentation – and plenty of analysis (I’ve been writing about social media tendencies for eight years)
• One man on LinkedIn retains saying that he’s envious that we’re capable of get these memes accredited by administration. For people who don’t know, SMT is an editorial group of two (2) individuals. Approval, on this sense, isn’t precisely a barrier.
• Does it take a very long time to provide you with them? Probably not. We normally do them in batches or round 10 at a time, then schedule them out on totally different days/occasions throughout FB, Twitter and LinkedIn. We are able to make 10 or so in, perhaps, a few hours, as soon as each week and a half or so. Not a significant dedication.
• We’re presently scheduling round one meme a day on every platform, once more, taking that newspaper comedian method. Possibly we miss a day right here and there, however that’s the final intention, as one thing to maintain that engagement flowing, and hold the leisure worth up.

Look, it’s not essentially a stroll within the park to maintain arising with humorous memes – and it might be that we run out of concepts at some stage and out of the blue it turns into much more tough. It’s additionally not for everybody. Arising with a (comparatively) intelligent joke that matches a meme template doesn’t at all times come simple, and there are days whenever you simply don’t have it, regardless of how exhausting you stare on the display screen.

However for a minor time dedication, it does appear, at the least at this stage, like this can be a great way to assist have interaction your viewers, which might additionally drive direct visitors advantages.

We’ll publish one other overview of our meme expertise three months in.