Twitter Brings Lower Quality Clicks

Richard Hoeg points out that for his blog Twitter = High Visits But Low Conversion. Basically, he shows his "referring sites" from Google Analytics for the past two weeks:

His conclusion:

Folks who visit from Twitter don't visit as many pages and spend less time of the site.

Of course, that made me wonder if twitter really was bringing lower quality clicks than other sources. That's contrary to what I would expect. You would think that someone who gets a link referred by someone they know would visit and then look around. It should be pretty qualified. So, I looked at a similar view of referring sites:

Indeed, people coming from twitter are the lowest in pages viewed per visit and near the bottom in time on site and highest bounce rate. Likely they were interested in the specific item that they came there for, but still it's a bit disappointing that they don't click around a bit more.

Of course, a relatively small percentage of traffic from twitter actually comes from "twitter.com" – many people use tools like TweetDeck. And I believe many of these are reported as Direct Traffic. So, I went to the list of All Traffic sources:

and while Direct Traffic does have a good number of referrals, it really doesn't provide good results. Basically, it's about the same as organic search traffic. And some of the Direct Traffic that comes from twitter is lumped in with Direct Traffic from other sources including RSS readers. And I believe that those other sources likely are higher quality clicks. Notice that google.com as a referring source (likely Google Reader) is better than Direct generally. Bloglines also has better numbers.

I tried to get a bit more detail by using bit.ly to see more about sources, but unfortunately, they also run into the same issue with the different twitter sources. Here's their description of "referring sites":

Direct Traffic includes people clicking a bit.ly link from:
- Desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Apple mail
- AIR applications like Twirhl
- Mobile apps like Twitterific or Blackberry Mail
- Chat apps like AIM
- SMS/MMS messages
It also includes people who typed a bit.ly link directly into their browser

So they can't help differentiate either. Bottom line, everything I'm seeing suggests that Richard was right:

Twitter brings lower quality clicks

What's also interesting here is that there's been quite a bit of high profile discussion around Does This Blog Get More Traffic From Google or Twitter? where there was a question of whether twitter brought more traffic than traditional sources. For Fred Wilson, he gets pretty huge twitter traffic.

For Richard and I, we don't get nearly the same levels and it's not even close.

Twitter delivers some traffic, but it's still small compared to search.

It's surprising that Fred Wilson is not looking at the question of the quality of his twitter traffic either.

Aggregators Bring Traffic

One last thought, it's been a while since 2007 Traffic Stats - Hopefully a Meme where I looked a bit at my traffic numbers. They've grown considerably over the years, but a lot of the statistics have remained consistent. One of the really interesting things I saw in Richard's stats and in my stats was:

Two Aggregators (eLearning Learning and Work Literacy) are among the top 5 in referring sites.

On Richard's eLearning Learning was number 7 as a referrer. For him, they were 100% new visitors and had pretty good pages clicked and time on site. For me, it was also pretty good quality traffic.

This is somewhat validating the concept behind these sites and the Browse My Stuff concept.

And all of this makes me think:

Marketers interested in quality clicks should focus less on twitter and more on blogging, search and aggregation.

Play and Socialize with People Interested in eLearning

I'm co-founder and CTO of a new start-up, Fantasy World, that creates fun, online games that allow groups of people to have fun, win prizes, play-along with celebrities, and most of all to socialize outside the normal context of the group. It's backed by a major entertainment company and my co-founder comes from the fantasy sports space.

Our first game has just launched, Survivor Football '09.

If you like American rules football (sorry this is not soccer), and you would enjoy socializing with a group of people who read this blog, please sign-up and join the Fight Club that is called - the eLearning Fun Club. I'd especially welcome any of you who can help us make better picks during the season, i.e., actually have some knowledge of Fantasy Football. I'm a fan, but have never done fantasy football before. Luckily the game is pretty simple, but still helpful to have a couple of ringers in our fight club to help us out.

Here's a video that explains a bit more about the game:

When you join, make sure you select the eLearning Fun Club as your fight club. That's where we will be hanging out. In addition to Fight Clubs, there are prizes. You can choose the prize you want at any time prior to the start - Week 2 kick-off.

Some of the other fight clubs are offering prizes in addition to the prize that you play for. I don't specifically have a prize in mind for the winner of the fight club yet.

Any ideas on what we could give? Maybe a copy of some books from authors who read this (and would want to play)? Maybe something from one of the vendors who reads this?

More generally, I believe that this represents something we will see more of in the future. Interesting ways to socialize that is outside the original venue and how we are used to socializing. I'm curious what Nancy White might have to say about this kind of thing. But that's likely another whole series of blog posts.

Nothing More Important in my Life Than Blogging

From Jay Cross' Informal Learning Flow Hot List for August, fantastic video with Seth Godin and Tom Peters discussing the value of blogging.

.

 

They sound a lot like what I say about blogging and learning.  This is going to be pretty good for an upcoming presentation to professional speakers about the use of social media.

Seth Godin

Doesn't matter if anyone reads it.

What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you are going to say.

How do you force yourself to describe in three paragraphs why you did something.

You are doing it for yourself to become part of the conversation even if it's very small.

Tom Peters

No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important in my life than blogging.

It has changed my life.  It has changed my perspective.  It has changed my intellectual outlook.  It has changed my emotional outlook.

Best damn marketing tool by an order of magnitude.

Both

And it's free.

Trends in Learning

Someone was just asking me about the big trends in learning and the implications of those trends on corporate learning and development.  I initially said - "Look at my blog," but when I looked, I realized it might be a bit harder than I thought to pull out the central themes.  So, here's a bit of a compilation of some of the things I've been talking about in my blog which points to some of the major trends in learning.

Environmental Changes

Some of the common trends I discuss in presentations are:

• Decreased L&D budgets
• Faster pace
• Increased workforce mobility
• Shorter job tenure
• Increased job fragmentation - fewer numbers in any one role
• Constant increase in complexity
• Greater concept work
• Need for faster proficiency
• Changing expectations for learning

The bottom line is that Learning and Development needs to do more with less these days or they will be marginalized. 

And the risk is pretty severe as described in the Business of Learning. 

Trends in What L&D Organizations are Doing

As a result of these trends, some L&D organizations are looking to social and informal learning.  Training Method Trends suggests that social learning tools are beginning to take off.  This will be a slow evolution.  And surveys such as Web 2.0 Applications in Learning suggest that this will be scattered.

There's considerable discussion throughout my blog around topics that relate to social / informal / learning 2.0:

• Formalizing and Investing in Informal Learning
• No Informal Learning and Blended Learning Mix - CLO Panel Surprises
• Action on Informal Learning - Leads to Great Questions
• Numbers and Informal Learning
• The Real Challenge around Informal Learning
• More on the Form of Informal
• The Paradox of Informal Learning (Form of Informal?)
• Informal Learning and Learning Management Systems
• Informal Learning - Let's Get Real - Part II
• Informal Learning - Harold Tells Us Where To Put It - Now What
• Informal Learning - Let's Get Real
• Elves, Measuring Results and Informal Learning
• eLearning 2.0: Informal Learning, Communities, Bottom-up vs. Top-Down

The whole social / informal / elearning 2.0 discussions implies some very Disruptive Changes in Learning.

In Long Live, I discuss how we are not talking about eliminating instructor-led, but that organizations are looking at alternatives.

The whole problem is Long Tail Learning. There is just way too much stuff that people need to learn that we have to make choices about what we spend our time publishing into formal learning events. The audience has to be large enough. As concept workers, we quickly go past formal learning opportunities. There's no course on what I do every day. And you cannot Separate Knowledge Work from Learning.

One option is to say that limit of training / workplace Learning Responsibility is formal learning. Once you go beyond formal learning, then there's an immediate question of what else you will provide. I know from Data Driven performance improvement solutions that often informal learning can be very effective in driving results. To me, the answer is pretty clear. You've got to look beyond formal.

The Result

When you look at Examples of eLearning 2.0, none of them individually seem all that radical.  Many organizations are using SharePoint to implement these kinds of solutions.

But when you look at the difference in control in Learning 1.0 vs. Learning 2.0, it's a pretty radical change.

There are significant opportunities around Online Coaching.  I'm hearing more on this all the time.

Examples of how social and informal learning is happening in the consumer space:

• Social Learning
• italki - Social Network for Language Learning 
• Social Learning Objects - Flash Cards

Approach to learning strategy needs to be different: Learning 2.0 Strategy

You need to think about systems quite different: LMS and Social Learning 

You have to prepare workers for web 2.0

L&D professionals and organizations having changing roles and responsibilities:

• Leading Learning and New Skills

• Social Learning Designer

• Workplace Learning Professionals Next Job - Management Consultant

• Improving Personal Learning - A Continuing Challenge for Learning Professionals

Other Thoughts

In Corporate Training, I look at the challenges learning and development organizations face in heading towards these kinds of solutions.

There are lots of possible Objections to making this happen.

Social Learning Measurement is still an issue.

Corporate Policies on Web 2.0 are emerging.

Desired Learning Outcomes may differ based on these changes.

Qarbon Camtasia and Adobe Captivate

Question from a reader, hoping you can provide your thoughts:

I am in the process of selecting an elearning tool that is easy to use, quick to create the demos and does not bloat the file size much. I want to create some online videos that will be a total of about 6-7 hours and upload them on my site. These videos would have software demos, screencasts and PowerPoints embedded inside them. Also every screen would have audio (voiceover with my voice) accompanying it. I will want to have a simple menu system to break up the content into chunks. And I may eventually, but not initially, want to be able to track them under an LMS, i.e., have SCORM tracking.

I have been looking into various tools. Here are some pros and cons I found about them.

Qarbon

Pros:

• Less File size.
• Qarbon seems very easy to use.

Cons:

• I'm finding it a bit difficult to integrate my voice with my demos and pull everything together.
• Creates as screenshot. To present a moving demo I need to integrate another product called Viewlet cam.
• Makes it a bit harder to pull everything together.

Camtasia and Adobe Captivate:

Pros:

• Heard lots of good thing about them.

Cons:

• Worried about file size for both of them

The more I am researching, the more I am getting confused.

----

There are quite a few Software Simulation Tools out there. I understand the confusion though because it's a combination of several different kinds of needs that are often addressed by different Rapid eLearning Tools.

What questions would you have? What might you suggest? What would you do to find a good solution?

Would you consider using a solution that integrates several tools that are possibly best of breed?