How important is twitter for your blog-traffic?

I have been posting frequently to my blog the last weeks, but I decided in the weekend to have two days without posts to see how my traffic data would change. I have also posted some blog posts without posting on twitter that I have new posts to see how people are following my blog. And the results are not just as expected. I use Google Analytics on my blog, and the key elements I check for is number of visitors, page views and how long people stay on the blog.

When I notify my followers on twitter that I have updated my blog can I see direct spikes in traffic to my blog. But this traffic is increasing the number of visits to my blog, but the average time people stay on the site is lower on this type of traffic, than when I post the blog as a comment to somebody – or if somebody else recommends my blog post. Responding to a discussion with a more detailed explanation gives more loyal readers. The more interested people are in the topic because it is “on topic” for them, the more interested they will be in both reading and commenting on your topic.

Generally all traffic is good. But you don’t want to over-hype your content. Ensure that you write a good title on your topic. And if the title isn’t to the point – write in brief what the post is about when you post to twitter about it. I have changed the way I notify my followers about new blog posts. I have used the format:

MrNR-blog post updated: “title” | http://j.mp/thisstory

My new format is the summary, then as much text from the blog post I can fit in the twitter message and then the URL. This gives the readers more about what the blog post is about before they click – with the goal to only get the readers that want the content – and not just click on it because the content is provided by me.
Posting frequently has also changed the statistics for my blog. More people are following the RSS-feed, and I therefor see increased followers in my feedburner statistics – this growth is readers that I reach, but that isn’t a part of my Google Analytics statistics as they read the “offline” RSS-feed. My goal isn’t to increase the number of web visitors – but to provide my content to the people that wants to read it.