Does anyone here use Facebook ads? If so, have you noticed them to be a good source of traffic at all?

I've never used Facebook ads. I am just starting the leverage the power of the social networks. I see much value in the social networks. The problem I am seeing is I can traget traffic on Twitter and Facebook and get the people to the sites. I just can't crack the nut of getting them to register and stay. It is beter than it was a couple years ago. The Facebook login does help, but, it's no where near what I think it should.

 

The question that I want to answer is how do we convert the traffic we get from the social networks into members?

I get a lot of traffic from Twitter, but I also am looking for the secret of converting guests into members.

How do you get a lot of traffic from twitter? Tweet your site?

Get twitter account for your site. Get an account on TwitterFeed and let it post your rss feed to that account. Post a few times a week just so people don't get just the feeds. Sit back and watch the traffic flow in.

 

You still need followers. There are tricks for that. This site has 2 twitter accounts, there's a story behind why, and between the 2 has almost 400 followers. I use my personal account to announce a new site when I start it. I use my personal account to converse with friends and rarely post any links unless it's to my blog or to announce a new site. That gets some followers. Then I use specific hashtags that target the niche the community is in with the first few manual tweets. With this site I wanted to target SEO and SEM. The followers built rapidly and still are.

 

So get a Twitter account for your site. seed it with a few manual Tweets and use the keywords you want to target as hashtags. In you case #weather, #skywarn. Don't use more than 2 per Tweet. If you want to use more then use then in another Tweet. Go to a site like TweetGetter and do a search for people in Illinois or for your keywords and add them to your list of followers. TweetGetter allows you to add 25 at a time. Don't get carried away. Add 25 and leave it at that. When you setup your feed use those hastags at the end of each post that gets fed to Twitter. Sit back and watch Twitter work. Don't just follow all the users that follow you. After my original list to seed the account I only add others that are in my niche or friends that are following the site.

 

After that sit back and watch the traffic and if you figure out how to get them to join let us all know how you did it.

Facebook ad is also a good idea - if you know how to tweak and manage it. allows for a laser targeted audience.

I have not used Facebook ads for the last five years. However, when I used facebook ads I had some good conversion. Based on my experience, if you advertise external product/service, it is difficult to get conversion, but if you advertise something that does not take you away from Facebook platform you will have a good conversion.